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THE 

INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

ON 

HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS 



THE INFLUENCE 
OF THOUGHT 

ON 

HEALTH, WEALTH, AND 
HAPPINESS 



BY 

H. ERNEST HUNT 

AUTHOR OF "NERVE CONTROL," " SELF-TRAINING, 

"A MANUAL OF HYPNOTISM," "a BOOK OF 

AUTO-SUGGESTIONS," ETC. 



DAVID M'KAY CO. 

604-608 South Washington Square 

PHILADELPHIA, PA. 

1920 



Ms 



First published, Autumn 1920 






PREFACE 

This little book represents an attempt to 
point out in simple and even prosaic manner 
the way in which thought is at work in the 
lives of all. It does not profess to be a 
volume for the scientist, its aim is rather, 
to reach our dear friend the man-in-the- 
street, and to open his eyes to the fact that 
opportunity is knocking at his door. His 
salvation surely lies in his capacity to order 
his individual thinking, and certainly not in 
Government Departments. 

H. ERNEST HUNT. 



CONTENTS 

[AP. PAGE 

I. THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE— 

1. The Impress of Thought . . 1 

2. Thought, Habit, and Character . 11 

3. Dominant Ideas and Action . . 16 

4. Perverted Dominants ... 22 

5. Mould, or be Moulded ... 29 

6. Mastering the Influence of Cir- 

cumstances ..... 37 

7. How Thinking Rules the Outlook 47 

8. Exploring the Mind ... 57 



II. THOUGHT AND HEALTH— 

1. Mind and Body 

2. Effects of Suggestion . 

3. Unconscious Suggestion 

4. Optimism and Pessimism 

5. Mental Poisons 

6. Mental States and Disease 

7. Resisting-Power 

8. "Vis Medicatrix Nature" 

9. Health and Holiness . 



67 

79 

85 

93 

98 

104 

112 

119 

126 



viii THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 



III. THOUGHT AND WEALTH- 

1. What is Business ? 

2. " He that is Greatest- 



3. Faith as a Basis of Permanence 

4. Making Friends 

5. Money-Making as an End 

6. Money and the Mind 

7. Sectional Interests 

8. Production and Invention . 

9. Business and Life . 



134 
140 
146 
152 
157 
163 
170 
177 
184 



IV. THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS— 

1. The Quest of Happiness . . 190 

2. The First Appeal . . . .196 

3. Self-Interest, and What Then ? . 201 

4. The Responsibility for Happiness 207 

5. Self-Expression as a Means of 

Happiness .... 213 

6. Life's many Problems . . . 219 

7. Sacred and Secular . . . 226 

8. The Vital Principle . . . 231 



THE INFLUENCE OF 
THOUGHT 

CHAPTER I 

THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 

The Impress of Thought 

Those of us who have not yet quite for- 
gotten the days of youth will probably 
recall the fable of the fairy who had three 
wishes to offer, wishes that would surely 
come true. We may recall, too, the sense 
of power and almost omnipotence with 
which that trio of possible blessings en- 
dowed us in advance, so that the only 
difficulty lay in selecting the most desirable 
for our own. How fine it was to feel that 
such things as we dreamed were to be 
obtained for the wishing ! So imagination 
wove its patterns in the fabric of our 
thoughts, and we were happy in our world 
of fantasy and glad with the giant confidence 



2 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

of youth. Though now, may be, the 
glamour of childhood be gone and we find 
ourselves soberer of dream and less sanguine 
of glories and greatness, yet to our thinking 
minds the prospect and the promise of 
those three wishes was not so very far 
from the mark of truth. It dawns upon us 
that it is often life's way that the thing the 
heart dwells upon, and round which the 
thoughts linger, at length comes into being ; 
the dream comes true, the object is achieved, 
or the pictured circumstance becomes reality. 
So we fall a-wishing, the one for this and 
the other for that, playing the child game 
over again ; and deluding ourselves with 
the idea that now we have become grown 
men and women we have for ever put away 
childish things. Indeed we have not : and, 
pray Heaven, we never shall. 

Everybody wishes — even those washed- 
out folk who explain that they have given 
up hoping for anything and are now re- 
signed to whatever an unkind fate may 
send them — even they are still wishing ; 
but they have simply packed those incon- 
veniently active desires away in the inmost 
chambers of the mind, locking the door, and 
ostentatiously throwing away the key. 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 3 

Those imprisoned desires keep up incessant 
hammering on the door and wildly struggle 
against their confinement, and the under- 
mind of the most confirmed pessimist is 
still a field of conflict and a battle-ground 
of contending desires ; for everybody wishes. 
But while the wish and the desire are in- 
stinctive and universal, while all of us seek 
happiness, even if it be but to touch the 
hem of her garment, yet the realisation 
of how the quest is to be accomplished 
seems to be vouchsafed to comparatively 
few. Thought, the wonder-working power 
by which seeming miracles are compassed, 
is overlooked by the majority ; its forces 
are unrealised and its possibilities uncon- 
jectured. Of all the royal gifts showered 
on humanity irrespective of wealth, rank, 
pursuit, or pedigree, this fine potency of 
thought is perhaps most overlooked of all. 
Could we be called upon to pay one penny 
each for thoughts at the Post Office there 
would be no getting near the counter. As 
it is, God gives us our thoughts free to think 
them as we will, and (forgive the trespasses 
of our commercial souls !) we value them at 
the price we pay. 

Thoughts and wishes break us, or make 



4 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

us, according as their directions lie ; they 
fetter us in life -long shackles, or they set 
us free ; they grip the mind of the miser 
and pack his soul away in his own money 
bags, or they liberate the spirit of the Saint 
and Saviour, to love in fine freedom the 
whole pulsing heart of humanity. They 
work incessantly for or against us, to our 
upbuilding or our undoing, and we cannot 
say them nay : we can no more prevent 
thoughts playing their vital part in our life 
than we can disown the law of gravity or 
proclaim our independence of oxygen. But 
there is the greatest difference between 
these latter and thought, inasmuch as 
thoughts can be controlled. It is of the 
utmost importance that it should be recog- 
nised that not only is this so, but that it is 
" meet, right, and our bounden duty " that 
thought should be so controlled. It is a 
force that produces its effects according to 
its direction ; if we allow it to work at 
haphazard the results will naturally be of 
an in-and-out nature, sometimes good and 
sometimes bad, and — like the well-known 
little girl's character — " when they are good 
they are very, very good ; but when they 
are bad they are horrid." Ignorance is 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 5 

certainly not bliss with reference to the 
power of thought, and it is largely due to 
non-realisation of the subtle and sometimes 
insidious ways in which thought works in 
the mind that the results in so many lives 
show themselves to be horrid. It is there- 
fore very much to the point that we should 
exercise our wits over this most important 
topic, and, after examining some of the 
workings of the machine and learning which 
buttons to push and which levers to pull, 
take charge ourselves and drive for the land 
of heart's desire. 

To some folks it comes as a surprise to 
realise that the thoughts we entertain do 
really matter and have a permanent effect. 
It is so easy to dismiss a thought from the 
mind and to think that we have finished 
with it, but in so imagining we have dis- 
regarded the faculty of memory. Directly 
we think, it becomes obvious that though the 
thought vanishes it leaves behind it some 
trace of its passage, like a footprint in the 
sand. We recognise a thought on its repeti- 
tion as a previous acquaintance, and if it 
recurs often we get to know it as an old 
friend, and presently we find ourselves 
actually expecting it as a matter of course 



6 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

since its presence has become more or less 
habitual. But just as memory makes an 
acquaintance grow into a friend and merge 
into a crony, so does it deepen the im- 
press of a thought repeated. We need 
no psychology to know that actions grow 
easier with repetition, until they pass into 
habits and are performed without conscious 
thought or attention. We see how an un- 
familiar tune quickly lodges in the mind and 
gradually becomes insistent until perhaps 
we are unable to get it out of our heads. 
These and countless other instances merely 
go to show that memory stores up some 
record of the fleeting thought; were it 
otherwise, a thought passing from the 
mind and leaving no trace would not be 
recognised anew, nor would actions become 
gradually easier, nor melodies be learnt. 
Experience, then, gives the lie direct to the 
idea that the thought in passing makes no 
difference ; it shows, on the contrary, that 
thoughts do really and truly matter, and 
this is a first point of much importance. 

As a rough and ready simile to the action 
of the impress of thought upon the mind, 
we may take the case of the engraver upon 
metal. One touch with his graving tool 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 7 

leaves its mark upon the plate, and so much 
of the metal has been removed. Let him 
repeat the touch and the cut is cleaner and 
deeper, while with repeated strokes the 
impress grows until the record is bold, 
strong, and ineffaceable. So with the mind, 
it is as if a first thought leaves its trace and, 
like to like, the repetition of that thought 
engraves the impress deeper ; and so the 
mark upon the mind scores itself into the 
fabric, a channel and a groove through 
winch passes the current of thought with 
ever-increasing ease. Thus, on this simile, 
upon our minds are graven the impress of 
past thoughts — all types, all kinds, and all 
degrees of intensity. What we do know is 
that the mind remembers, but what no man 
has been able to demonstrate is that this 
mind forgets. We may not be able to bring 
an idea back into consciousness, as when 
we try to recall a forgotten name ; but over 
and over again such ideas will prove by 
their spontaneous return that the memorj^ 
record was perfect and only the machinery 
of recall defective. 

It would take too long, and occupy 
valuable space much needed, to develop 
this point of perfect memory ; it must 



8 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

suffice to say that practically all modern 
scientific writers agree that while time and 
lack of recall may dim the record of an item 
in memory, and while such may be overlaid 
by the continuous rush of new impressions, 
yet nothing that has so far been demon- 
strated has given us any grounds for believ- 
ing that there is any " wiping out " process 
from the tablets of memory. On the con- 
trary, hypnosis, psycho-analysis, and other 
lines of investigation incline us to the view 
that memory is perfect and absolute, and 
that its storehouse holds prodigious wealth 
or rubbish as the case may be, of which but 
the veriest fragment can at any one time 
be within the ken of consciousness. 

If everything of our past thought-ex- 
perience be engraved upon the surface of 
memory, then our minds must be as maps 
of our past thinking : here the mountain- 
peaks of exaltation and aspiration, there 
the valleys of shadow and depression, 
yonder the streams of desire, the dark places 
of failure, and the chasms of despair. In 
ourselves is our life's record written by none 
other than the hand of self ; self -recorded, 
self-accused, and self-judged are we. This, 
be it remembered, is no fancy picture ; 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 9 

although the simile is but an illustration, 
yet its import is in consonance with the 
facts. Memory, of course, is not a tablet, 
but in ourselves are the writings, as we shall 
show in some detail later. The mind in its 
record is our history, from which there have 
been no erasures, and whose authenticity 
it were idle for us to deny. We are wise if 
we recognise the facts and seek to profit 
thereby. 

To turn again to everyday experience, 
we see the early thoughts of youth grow 
into the strong ideas of adult life, and later 
solidify into the dogmatic bigotry of old age. 
The crusted Tory was not of necessity born 
either crusted or Tory, but by long use 
and development his brain tracks grew to 
paths, and finally to grooves so deep that 
the thoughts and opinions could run in no 
other channel. By that time progress was 
finished, and he had become the hard-and- 
fast opinionated individual unable to see 
eye to eye with anyone else, impatient of 
contradiction and absolutely impervious to 
reason or argument. This, of course, is the 
logical outcome of a one-pointed concentra- 
tion of ideas ; it means lack of mental 
elasticity and demonstrates a rigidity and 



10 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

stiffness which approximates to mental 
death. Yet we are all " groovy," and 
happy are we if the grooves be good ones 
so that the rivers of sympathetic thought 
run fresh and free in us from sweet charity's 
springs ; and woe if the waters of kindness 
be soured or stagnant and poison our 
thinking. 

The mere fact that thoughts are continu- 
ally passing through the mind and leaving 
their mark assures us that building of some 
sort is continually in process ; and our 
experience, both with ourselves and other 
people, corroborates the view. Obviously, 
then, since the mind grows by accretion of 
thought, we cannot stay still — we must 
either be marching or marking time. March- 
ing is progress, marking time means that 
we are scoring the old grooves deeper and 
developing into creatures of habit — we are 
being mastered by our thoughts instead of 
proving ourselves their masters. Fresh 
thoughts and ideas are food to the mind 
upon which it can feed and grow, it can no 
more thrive without sustenance than can 
the body. The mind introverted or turned 
in upon itself, as in solitary confinement, 
becomes diseased or distorted and often 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 11 

completely unhinged. It is the stream of 
consciouness flowing laden with fresh ideas, 
varied impressions, and happy thoughts 
that keeps us sweetly sane. But the out- 
standing facts to which these considerations 
testify are that thoughts matter most 
completely in the mind, that every thought 
leaves behind it some trace, and that 
thoughts repeated score their impress the 
deeper according to their frequency and 
intensity. 

Thought, Habit, and Character 

We speak at times of some people we 
come across as " thoughtless," but the term 
is a misnomer, and it would be more correct 
to say that their thinking was ill-directed. 
A thoughtless person is generally lacking 
in thought for others, but by no means 
so towards himself. Everybody entertains 
thoughts of one type or another all day 
long, but naturally some kinds are enter- 
tained with greater frequency or stronger 
interest and intensity than others, and these 
give their special bias or inclination — their 
" bent " to the mind. These are the 
channels along which the thoughts flow the 
more freely, and in the automatic record 



12 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

of their passing engrave themselves the 
deeper. 

Without entering into the abstruse ques- 
tion of whence thoughts first come or how 
they originate, we may safely assert, on the 
basis of universal experience, that present 
thinking is intimately influenced by past 
thought. We know that a thought once 
entertained tends to recur when recalled by 
some association, and we recognise how 
closely wedded become hymn tune and the 
parodied words, so that they can henceforth 
no more be set asunder in our mind. We 
find ourselves falling into " habits " of 
thought which run with increasing ease 
until the train of ideas seems at length to 
have laid bare the secret of perpetual 
motion, and to be capable of travelling by 
itself. Thus we are still on safe ground 
when arguing that the thoughts we sow 
in our mind are the seeds of future thoughts, 
and these again the seeds of others. This 
automatic multiplication of thoughts, with 
their attendant record in mind, explains 
how types of thought become habitual ; 
there are habits of thought in each of us 
of all varying degrees of intensity, and 
according to the rapiditj^ of their multiplica- 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 13 

tion so does the mind in its thinking 
gravitate towards one or other direction. 
Thus grow our likes and dislikes, our 
hopes and our fears, our inclinations and 
tendencies ; none of them spring, Minerva- 
like, full-grown into being, but each has 
developed by a process of accumula- 
tion, thought upon thought to its present 
strength. 

We need not overlook the fact that we 
inherit predispositions and have inscribed 
within the nervous system at birth special 
adaptations ; so much we may accord to 
Nature. But to nurture, with all its possi- 
bilities of rebuilding and transforming, we 
would attribute the vastly greater power. 
The road of our inborn tendencies often 
lies downhill, and were we just unthinking 
machines we needs must follow it ; but, 
gifted as we are with at any rate some free- 
dom to say Yes or No, it is possible for us to 
turn our steps up hill and climb to nobler 
destinies. The word " heredity " is to some 
a veritable fate which holds their very 
thoughts in check from fear and awe, to 
others it is a vastly convenient excuse by 
which they may explain their vices and 
palliate their offence. There are thousands 



14 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

of otherwise intelligent folk who are content 
to mutter, " Oh, I was born so," in extenua- 
tion of traits which, truth to tell, they are 
too lazy to take the trouble to alter. They 
may have been born so indeed, but why, 
with the stream of conscious thought ever 
flowing fresh through their lives, should they 
remain so ? The sewing machine may start 
with a squeak, but why allow it to continue 
squeaking ? It certainly cannot do its best 
work perpetually uttering its noisy protest 
against wrong conditions. So also, instead 
of giving utterance to these misjudged re- 
marks, those worthy folk would be more 
wisely employed in rectifying the things that 
are wrong. 

What we find ourselves, then, to-day is 
very largely the outcome of our past think- 
ing ; we have cultivated, indulged, or at 
least allowed the various types of thought 
to become familiar and then more or less 
habitual in the mind, and the aggregate 
result is our character. This cannot in the 
nature of things contain anything that has 
not been previously implanted by thought, 
though, with regard to our equipment at 
birth, the thoughts may have been operative 
in the lives of our parents or other relatives ; 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 15 

also when we were in the practically de- 
fenceless state of childhood we may have 
had impressions fastened upon us by the 
thoughts of others. But even when we 
make allowances for heredity and early in- 
fluences we may still advance the broad 
statement that for the things that now hold 
sway and dominance in the character the 
individual must himself take chief respon- 
sibility. Character, far from being the 
product of a moment, is built up by long- 
continued habits of thought. The im- 
patient character is compounded of a horde 
of hasty thoughts which have dug so deep 
a channel in the mind that the flood of 
impatience sweeps aside the gentler in- 
fluences of calm and patience. The fearless 
character fashions itself from strong and 
courageous thinking ; nourishment of heroic 
stuff breeds heroes, and fear- thoughts mould 
the timid, shrinking, and distrustful mind. 

Trite as these observations are, it is 
nevertheless wholly necessary to emphasise 
them, for even if the majority of people 
recognise these elementary truths, they give 
the lie to such recognition by their actions. 
Character is always an unfinished thing, 
never finite, never complete, for ever being 



16 THE INFLUENCE OP THOUGHT 

augmented or modified by the current 
thought. It is like a newspaper, its record 
in its past, but a record always being modi- 
fied and its reputation being increased or 
diminished by each successive daily issue. 
What journal would dare stand upon its 
inception and appeal to its readers on the 
ground that it was " founded on this or 
that " ? It is its present valuation that 
counts ; and so it is with character. Thus 
it is merely commonsense and elementary 
wit to note what type of seed we plant in 
the garden of the mind — to cultivate the 
more worthy blossoms of thought, and to 
allow the noxious to fade for lack of 
sustenance. The touchstone of life itself 
is character, and it is in this simple pro- 
cess of thought accumulation that the 
formation of character lies. 

Dominant Ideas and Action 

Action is the step that follows naturally 
upon thought, it is its normal discharge. 
Looking at it the reverse way we observe 
that action is always preceded by thought, 
though it by no means follows that the 
thought enters into consciouness. When 
we do a thing " without thinking " we mean 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 17 

without conscious attention, but the act is 
nevertheless performed by virtue of stored- 
up thought in the form of habit. We do 
not think about the thousand-and-one vege- 
tative processes which are always in opera- 
tion in the body, the beating of the heart, 
the maintenance of the bodily temperature, 
the rhythm of breathing, or the process of 
digestion ; but these again are carried on 
instinctively under the direction of stored- 
up race habits which, we may well believe, 
are formed by some process analogous to 
that of the acquisition of habit in the 
individual. So thought in some form or 
other lies at the basis of action. 

Thought tends naturally to pass into 
action, but quite obviously it is not every 
thought that succeeds in doing so. Practi- 
cally speaking, we never get a single thought 
as a unit — a hermit, so to say, in the wilder- 
ness of mind. The mind, far from being a 
wilderness, is more like a battle-ground of 
contending hosts. Thoughts have relations 
of all degrees of proximity : father, mother, 
sisters, aunts, cousins, and possibly mother- 
in-law, and step-children also. Family-like, 
too, these thoughts possess individuality, 
some have strength, some persuasiveness, 



18 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

some insistence, and others may be shy and 
retiring — we may indeed credit thoughts 
with all the varied characteristics that we 
ourselves display. Amid this medley of 
thought there is the usual pushing and 
elbowing that obtains in the ordinary crowd, 
and with much the same result — the 
strongest come to the front. In the realm 
of thought " coming to the front " means 
earning the right to result in action, and 
it is the master-thought, the dominant 
motive that achieves it. A man may be 
approaching a mendicant by the side of 
the footpath, his first impulse is to give 
him sixpence, but then he remembers how 
completely he has been taken in on other 
occasions ; the usual pitched battle then 
takes place between generosity and caution. 
If generosity wins, the beggar gets his 
sixpence; but if caution prevails, he goes 
without — the battle is to the stronger, and 
the victor-motive is rewarded with the right 
to act. In this way it is always the 
dominant motive, the master-thought or 
series of thoughts which issue in action. 
Were a musician's master- thought to be 
the performance of a Bach fugue, and some 
rag-time ditty were to sally forth in its place, 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 19 

who would be more greatly astonished than 
the musician himself ? If a person's one 
aim and object were to go forth out of doors, 
and something put him to bed — if, in short, 
master-thoughts did not result in action, 
then our world would quickly be at sixes 
and sevens. But experience assures us 
otherwise. 

Hesitation shows what happens when 
opposing thought forces are fairly evenly 
matched : we are in " two minds," and the 
appropriate action is delayed until one or 
the other idea is reinforced and secures 
assured dominance, then the action follows 
accordingly. Sometimes our present think- 
ing is in conflict with long-graven habits of 
thought, and time and again the older 
forces may win and almost force us to do 
the things against which we strive valiantly 
enough in our consciouness. But we may 
take heart of grace and know that the per- 
fect memory, which causes our present 
trouble by its faithfulness in recording the 
past thoughts that we would now disown, 
this same memory will with the same 
faithfulness record our present striving, and 
on the balance will assess us so much the 
higher on the scale of character. We are 



20 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

called upon to fight, but not of necessity are 
we held accountable for the issue — often 
enough fierce righting that ends in failure 
is finer than facile success. 

Dominant ideas then prove their mastery 
by transition into action, and the action 
itself is first-hand evidence of the type of 
idea that held sway at the time in the mind. 
Here again the conclusions at which we 
arrive are perfectly plain and devoid of 
subtlety, but if everyone realised that they 
acted strictly according to their dominant 
ideas, and that these ideas themselves are 
mainly compounded of their past thoughts, 
how much simpler the machinery of life 
would look. Character building, then, 
assumes somewhat of the prosaic nature of 
the building of a house, brick by brick. 
But whereas the builder who cares for his 
handiwork is careful of the material which 
he selects to incorporate in his structure, 
the average man is supremely indifferent 
as to the ideas and thoughts which he allows 
to go to the making of his dominant ideas. 

Anyone can build a dominant idea ; 
everyone does so, as our characters testify. 
More, indeed, than this, everyone is bound 
to do so. But while here and there an 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 21 

occasional man builds according to a pre- 
determined plan and so makes the best use 
of skilfully chosen material, the general 
fashion seems to be to gather a hetero- 
geneous collection of second-hand material, 
shoot it anywhere and anyhow, and trust 
to luck to its looking like a genuine edifice 
if the inspection be not too close, and the 
weather holds. Imagine ! That is the way 
in which we have grown ; what is there 
beyond our grasp if only we were to build 
on the saner plan ? The marvel is that we 
stand where we do ; and, badly as we have 
built, our position to-day is simply a 
commentary on how badly others must have 
built to secure a worse result. 

For the moment let us be perfectly clear 
about this next step in our argument. 
Memory registers our every thought, and 
puts it on record by engraving it in the fabric 
of the mind ; repetition scores its impress 
the deeper ; and finally, in the growth, 
certain ideas, by their intensity or volume, 
tend to become dominant. These give the 
definite traits and points of character. 
Under appropriate circumstances these 
dominants issue into action. But apart from 
these characteristic permanent dominants, 



22 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

in the hundred and one daily circumstances 
there will be temporary dominants, first 
one and then another, which give rise to 
the countless actions of every day. Only 
dominant ideas can secure corresponding 
actions, and once an idea has gained the 
ascendancy in the mind it is certain that, 
as soon as opportunity offers, it will blossom 
into action. 

Perverted Dominants 

Looking round, with special reference to 
character, it is not difficult to discern how 
large a part of the shadows of life are due 
to what we may term perverted dominant 
ideas. We see people at cross purposes with 
the Universe, with everything going wrong, 
and their whole life a range of discord ; 
for the greater part of which wrong thinking 
is responsible. We have to meet the events 
of life as one force meets another, and in 
order that the resultant should follow the 
line of harmony it is necessary that we 
should meet events at a certain angle. This 
means that we must find that attitude to- 
wards life which produces the desired result, 
in short, that we should adapt ourselves to 
life and its great laws as a condition of 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 23 

harmony. Where we contend against vital 
principles we ourselves are damaged, not 
by any vindictive process, but just as 
automatically as if we were to try to push 
our head through the party wall instead 
of entering by way of the door. 

A wrong attitude of life in general simply 
means that our dominant ideas are perverted, 
and this is as an inevitable consequence 
of the trend of our past thoughts. A rough 
and ready test of the correct adjustment of 
life is harmony, or the absence of friction. 
Where we find things going wrong and 
troubles coming thick and fast upon our 
devoted heads, we should eschew resigna- 
tion and regrets, and suchlike un-Christian 
vices, and look at the events squarely and 
try to find their meaning. They have one ; 
they are the by-products of mal-adjustment 
and wrong conditions, just as much as pain 
is in the body. They are also, again like 
pain, invaluable for the purpose of diagnosis. 
Law and order hold throughout the Universe, 
for every effect there must have been an 
efficient cause — life works as if this were 
true, and we can indeed conceive of no other 
theory. Therefore, for the things that go 
wrong there must be a cause ; and, once 



24 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

we have got upon its track, a most ex- 
hilarating and engrossing pursuit ensues 
upon our endeavour to run it to ground. 
Having unearthed it and traced its workings 
up to the trouble manifestations, we shall 
find that most usually the difficulty or 
distress is due to wrong thinking. If, now, 
we reverse the current of our ideas and set 
to work to fashion another dominant, so 
that we meet life at another angle, the 
resultant will necessarily be different. But 
wherever undesirable results are a conse- 
quence of wrong thinking, nothing in the 
world will alter those results save remedying 
the thinking. Not all the prayers under 
Heaven will serve in place of better thinking, 
and, on the other hand, perhaps right think- 
ing is not so far from that " praying without 
ceasing " to which we are so strongly 
recommended. 

A youth with hazy ideas as to the differ- 
ence between "mine" and "thine" is 
wrongly adjusted to life, his dominants are 
at any rate in some danger of perversion. 
Given the opportunity of theft, having no 
bias towards honesty to save him, he will 
probably succumb. Nature very possibly 
takes the shape of the policeman on the 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 25 

beat, lodges him in the dock, and makes 
things unpleasant for him. The theoretical 
idea of punishment is that it is remedial. 
But it is likely that our young friend will 
explain to himself that he has only suffered 
because the policeman happened to see him, 
and perhaps he will have better luck next 
time ; or because he was a little clumsy 
over the job — a fault which practice will 
remedy ; or because the fool of a shop- 
keeper was too careless over his goods ; or 
any one of a dozen things according to 
circumstances. We may be tolerably sure 
that the last thing he will fix upon as the 
cause will be the real reason — his faulty 
dominant ideas. Consequently, any future 
efforts he may make towards keeping out 
of the clutches of the law will in all likelihood 
be futile, because wrongly directed. His 
salvation therefore will be further delayed. 
A book pointing out a few obvious truths 
of this description might be specially com- 
missioned for prison libraries ; it would be 
a good investment. 

But what is true, in principle, of our young 
friend the thief, is true of all ; perfection of 
character rarely, if ever, exists amongst us, 
and therefore we fail to find the completely 



26 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

untroubled life that might be expected 
to rise therefrom. The average person 
assuredly meets with trouble enough ; he 
too easily blames circumstances, events, and 
other people, rarely tracing back the diffi- 
culty to his own thought. The tongue is 
an unruly member and frequently lands its 
owner in difficulty, but is it sufficient to 
say, " I will hold my tongue next time ? ' : 
Yet that is as far as most people carry their 
analysis. It would be more to the point to 
recognise that "out of the fullness of the 
heart the mouth speaketh," and that it is 
to the regulation of these heart-felt thoughts 
that attention should rightfully be directed. 
Little points of behaviour may arise that 
hurt other people's feelings, and the case 
is inadequately met by recourse to a manual 
of etiquette ; the real remedy lies in the 
cultivation of kindlier feelings for others 
and a readier sympathy. Jealousy may 
mar the whole life and outlook, but the 
resort to camouflage and a mask of unmean- 
ing smiles is but to make confusion worse 
confounded. The remedy to all these con- 
ditions lies, as surely as does their cause, 
in the thinking of the individual. The 
teacher finds a difficulty, exactly parallel 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 27 

to these adult failings, in the small boy who 
cannot do his sums. The boy thinks it is 
because he has forgotten this or that rule, 
or has mistaken a figure or two ; but the 
view is too short-sighted. The real reason 
is because he does not use his brains, his 
dominant idea being indolence or inertia. 
The same youth has dirty fingers and 
explains that the scrubbing-brush would not 
get the ink off, the truth being that he has 
dirty dominant ideas. When the baby 
sucks a piece of coal it is not, strictly 
speaking, the coal that matters ; it is the 
unfortunate idea in the child's mind that 
coal and the other casual things it comes 
across are to be considered as articles of 
diet. It is generally better by precept and 
example to instil a safer master- thought. 

One of the most subversive of all common 
dominants is " I can't," Millions of estim- 
able folk go through life emasculated by this 
idea ; it is perhaps the most universal form 
of fear. Where it exists, it tends to spread ; 
and where it spreads, it tyrannises, Its 
results are shown in lack of enterprise, in 
inertia, diffidence, and incompetence ; while 
subsidiary effects manifest themselves in 
consequent depression, repression, and self- 



28 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

depreciation, and also in envy and mis judg- 
ment of the men who work by the " I can " 
standard. But this perverted dominant has 
grown by a logical process, and by an equally 
logical process can be supplanted by a better. 
The first point which we are trying to drive 
home is that these perverted dominants are 
so appallingly common, and that they hedge 
mankind in to a degree vitally unsuspected, 
yet fraught with the most dangerous conse- 
quences. Further, that they are confined 
to no one class, section, age, or degree ; 
they operate in the baby and the sage, in 
the lives of Saints and in the acts of criminals. 
" Whatsoever things are true, lovely, and 
of good report — think on these," is, in 
Biblical language, neither more nor less than 
advice adapted to ensure healthy dominant 
ideas in the mind. But the things we 
generally think upon are frequently far 
from lovely and their report is often not 
above suspicion — as witness the murders, 
crimes, and unsavoury topics that crowd 
the newspapers, the smoking-room stories 
that degrade the status of sex, the un- 
scrupulous political methods, and the in- 
tolerance of much that passes for religion. 
The nation needs a mental spring cleaning, 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 29 

but this cannot be effected by Act of 
Parliament — all movement towards better 
thinking in the mass must originate in the 
unit. The responsibility is upon each in- 
dividual to stop butting his head against the 
wall of wrong thoughts, and to adopt the 
saner plan of making his entrance into the 
halls of progress through the doorway of 
right thinking. 

Mould or be Moulded 

It is open to anyone to take in the King- 
dom of Self, according to the way in which 
thought works in his life, either a position of 
command and control or one of subjection. 
Thought works in any case, but being 
essentially neutral in character, it depends 
for results upon its direction. If, as the 
captain of his soul, a man takes charge of 
his thoughts and moulds them according to 
the dictates of his insight and ideals, then 
he fashions thereby not only his thoughts 
but his character, and largely his life and 
destiny. But if, on the other hand, he 
permits his thoughts to be dictated by events, 
controlled by circumstances, and influenced 
by individuals, then he himself is being 
moulded from the outside ; he grows, not by 



30 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

self-expression, but by compression. These 
are practically the only two alternatives ; 
the former offers ever- widening vistas of 
achievement, the latter is the high road to 
mediocrity, insignificance, and failure. 

Life is truly a school, and Dame Nature 
insists that we shall get on ; nothing is 
accepted as an excuse for refusal to progress. 
But there is choice for us as to whether we 
learn voluntarily and intelligently — in which 
case progress is comparatively rapid — or 
whether we learn by compulsion, by hard 
knocks, pain, and distresses. We have long 
ago noted this process in action in lesser 
things, but we overlook it strangely in the 
business of fife. Every game we play has its 
technique and its rules, which, if we would 
be successful, we must observe ; it would be 
the crassest folly to keep on breaking the 
rules and making a habit of bad play. Of 
a certainty that would lead to no success. 
Societies and institutions have their rules 
and obligations, to which we must conform or 
forfeit the privilege of membership ; business 
has its technique, which we must learn ; the 
Sciences have their fundamentals that de- 
mand acceptance and respect ; it seems 
that only in regard to the much larger 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 31 

sphere of real life that man is content 
to blunder along anyhow, at cross-purposes 
with the scheme of things, and without 
taking the trouble to make himself ac- 
quainted in advance with the laws of the 
game. He may, indeed, be willing to learn 
by the hard knocks of experience, but it is 
a very distinctly second-best process. 

We all know those weak, indeterminate 
persons who are continually being sat upon 
by more forceful individuals, either sex will 
furnish us with examples galore ; meek 
husbands with domineering wives, and 
blustering men-folk with washed-out spouses ; 
tyrannous employers with subservient and 
colourless clerks, and so on. Nature there, 
through the mediumship of wife, husband, 
or employer, is doing her level best to 
hammer some grit into these weaklings. 
They are not meeting with the rough side 
of things by chance or gratuitously ; the 
cause lies in the fact that by their lack of 
fibre they are ill-adjusted towards life. 
They have not learned self-reliance by the 
voluntary method, and so they are being 
forced to learn it by the logic of events. 
It may be long before they realise the mean- 
ing of their troubles, and quite probably 



32 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

those difficulties may have to grow a great 
deal worse before the way out forces itself 
upon their attention. Eventually, how- 
ever, the breaking-point of their endurance 
will be reached ; the worms will turn, and 
Dame Nature, by her kindly unkindness, 
by her stern and severe moulding, will have 
brought those weaklings to the realisation 
that by self -moulding there must be infused 
into character an element of self-reliance 
and self-respect, the lack of which has been 
at the root of their distresses. Moreover, 
what is true in this particular case, is true 
also as a general principle with the widest 
application. 

There are many people who take their 
tone from the weather conditions, who are 
happy enough in the sunshine, but who are 
completely depressed by the rain or storm 
and go about full of complaints as to the 
" beastly weather " and its effects, which are 
" so depressing you know." The health 
and spirits of these impressionable folk 
could almost be diagnosed by one ignorant 
of their existence from the chart of the 
daily barometric readings. In their up-and- 
down states they suffer for their lack of 
self-moulded poise. Nature hammers them 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 33 

in another but entirely appropriate way. 
So also with those whom good fortune 
exalts to the skies and bad hurls unto the 
depths, the very depths seem more abysmal 
by contrast with the former heights ; each 
experience calls to them, " Learn self- 
control, and so forbid these extreme re- 
actions to circumstances," but they are 
long in learning. It is sufficient for them 
to blame their temperament and exculpate 
themselves. So again with those who are 
dominated by others in matter of will, 
policy, or behaviour ; they have sacrificed 
their own individuality, and if evil follows 
upon the course to which they have con- 
sented they must of necessity share in its 
results. But the bad results themselves are 
agents in the ultimate reconstruction of 
the individual ; like all the other hammer- 
ings of outward moulding, their final import 
is, by the application of force, to transform 
the inertia of the individual into a momen- 
tum which he himself by better thinking 
shall accelerate. 

It is folly to say that such and such a 
person can make us angry or that certain 
things can compel us to fear ; it would, 
however, be correct to acknowledge that 



34 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

the anger or the fear within us can be 
aroused to activity. They must obviously 
first be there as possible dominants. Herein 
is the crux of the matter ; anger is given its 
opportunity to manifest, and so is fear, but 
if the mind be poised by dominants of even 
temper, control, and courage, then these 
hold sway in action, and anger and fear are 
powerless to awaken an echo. Within our- 
selves are the strings tuned to life's emotions 
and ready to respond each to the call of 
its own note. In so far as we are capable 
of response to negative or harmful emotions, 
we do so answer ; but if we tune our minds 
to higher things, then the lower can awaken 
no answer in us. We are no longer swayed 
by those external impulses, and they cease 
to mould us to their will. But again, it is 
self-moulding that, as it were, liberates us 
from the influences that would affect us. 

It may be pointed out that moulding by 
thought is not confined to the mind ; ex- 
ternal things that mould the mind to worry 
write their impress also upon the features. 
The face is drawn into that particular 
expression in accord with the emotion, and 
by the multiplicity of passing cares the lines 
that bespeak worry are gradually carved 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 35 

in the features ; curiously enough, ex- 
perience seems to show that they are also 
drawn in the palm of the hand, for the palm 
of the worrier is generally far more crossed 
by minute lines than that of the average 
non-worrier. So in the same way do anger, 
malice, hatred, hardness, and other unhappy 
thoughts write their advertisements in the 
face, and consequently the very first thing 
we learn about some folk is the unhappy 
disposition they thus manifest plain for all 
to see. Naturally enough this must affect 
our manner towards them and also our 
relationship, whether in the way of social 
intercourse or business ; and thus the circle 
of influence, originated by the unhappy 
thinking and moulding, expands and pro- 
duces far-reaching results. 

Self-moulding demands the exercise of 
some degree of concentration and will- 
power ; it means some measure of self- 
denial, and the subordinating of present 
impulse to future gain. It is necessary to 
indulge in clear thinking in order that the 
bias we give to our thoughts may be in the 
right direction. Principles must stand out 
clear from the maze of details. Selfishness 
or service, the material or the spiritual 



36 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

gospel, are in essence and ultimate analysis 
the only two creeds, under whatever guise 
or ism they may appear. Whoever moulds 
his thinking along the lines of selfish interest 
or material gain will sooner or later find 
himself involved in the friction which is 
Nature's effort at readjustment. Creeds as 
old as history assert this fundamental truth. 
But whoever moulds his thoughts to vibrate 
to some chord of the harmony of love, puts 
himself in tune with the great purposes ; 
he is in line with the evolutionary forces. 
By love (using the word in its widest sense) 
we evolve, as ancient creeds again attest. 
The Saint, by common consent, is higher 
up the evolutionary scale than the hooligan, 
but his power to rise has been simply 
this power to love more wisely and less 
selfishly. What would make the hooligan 
curse and swear would not affect the Saint ; 
what would give rise to a string of oaths in 
the elementary man is ignored by the real 
gentleman ; different stages in evolution 
give rise to different reactions. Our power 
/ to rise, therefore, is the capacity to take 
I high ideals of character and ability, and to 
make them dominant in our minds by 
constant thought. We do not need to 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 37 

oppose the lower, we outgrow it. Sufficient 
love extinguishes hate, jealousy, or anger, 
as surely as sufficient light extinguishes 
darkness, or sufficient health wards off 
disease. Bold thoughts, fine thoughts, and 
holy thoughts should be to the mind as 
dumb-bells are to the muscles — a means of 
growth. Service is the practical expression 
of love and the justification of our existence ; 
Nature is too good an engineer to allow 
superfluous parts in her machine, and if we 
serve no useful purpose in the scheme of 
things we shall surely in the long run be 
eliminated. But as our love, and the efforts 
of our love, are turned outwards to others, 
they expand and grow as does a beam of 
light ; and when they are focussed inwards 
upon the self they narrow down. We grow 
and gain beyond measure by moulding 
ourselves by fine thoughts to ever finer 
reaction and achievement. 

Mastering the Influence of Circumstances 

It is indeed a profitable inquiry to con- 
sider how far a man need be at the mercy of 
circumstances ; that he very commonly is 
so requires no demonstration. We are apt 
to take things at their face value, to accept 



38 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

them, and to adjust ourselves to them, 
simply because they exist. This, however, 
is merely the point of view of the animal, 
and as men and women we have the power 
to question and to test, to investigate, weigh, 
and probe. Under such treatment it will 
commonly be found that the power of 
circumstances is for the most part illusory, 
and is contingent upon our acquiescence 
and belief. If we think that a thing has 
power over us, we invest it with just so much 
efficacy and jurisdiction ; whereas to regard 
it as of no special importance is at any rate 
to deprive it of any fictitious influence with 
which it might otherwise be invested. 
Shakespeare puts forward this same point 
when he says that " there's nothing either 
good or bad but thinking makes it so." 

When the doctor views the onset of disease 
in the individual he traces two causes at 
work, the predisposing cause which gives 
the suitable soil, and the exciting cause 
which plants the seed. The soil itself is not 
sufficient without the seed, nor the seed 
without the soil ; or, to take another simile, 
there is the barrel of gunpowder as potential 
power, and the lighted match as the actual 
cause which provides the opportunity of 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 39 

its transformation into explosive energy. 
Circumstances and ourselves may be viewed 
in somewhat the same relationship ; we our- 
selves being masses of potential energy, and 
circumstances providing the means of outlet. 
In our minds we have the master-thoughts 
awaiting the opportunity to pass into 
action, and the utmost that circumstances 
can do is to provide that opportunity; 
life provides us with matches enough, but 
we, by the direction of our master-thoughts, 
determine in what way our pent-up energies 
shall expand. It is just nonsense to say 
that a man is at the mercy of circumstances ; 
sometimes he may be beaten by them, but 
history is full of great examples of men who 
have won through in spite of every adverse 
fate. Their lives are testimony that even 
the most opposing barriers fall down before 
indomitable will. That others failed in the 
fight proves nothing save that man may 
fail (though who are we that we should 
judge that any brother has truly failed ?), 
while the successful at any rate demonstrate 
that men have won and that men can win 
again. 

Granted that life is full of events for us, 
that day by day a hundred circumstances 



40 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

arise which call for response on our part, 
it seems clear that the response will vary- 
according to the master-thoughts of the 
individual. Each person will respond 
according to the make-up of his mind, and 
thus, while the exciting cause may be 
general, the reaction will be particular to 
the person in each case. For example, a 
man may make an inappropriate remark 
in company, and one of his hearers may be 
angry, another amused, a third scornful, a 
fourth sarcastic, while another may leave 
the room in protest ; to the same exciting 
cause there may be an infinite number of 
reactions. It is absurd to say in any 
accurate sense that the same thing " makes " 
one man angry and another amused, " com- 
pels " one to be scornful and another to get 
up and go out. It would be equally absurd 
to say that the poppy, which the ordinary 
person sees as red and the colour-blind in- 
dividual as ash-grey, is at once both red 
and ash-grey. The exciting cause can 
neither make nor compel any particular 
reaction, circumstances cannot control any- 
one. We may not be able to determine 
circumstances, but according to our measure 
of self-control and direction we can regulate 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 41 

its influence upon ourselves ; this is tanta- 
mount to asserting the dominance of self 
over the power of circumstances. 

A case in point was the incidence of 
air raids over open towns during the late 
war — the circumstance of the raids was 
obviously a matter over which the in- 
dividual could exercise no jurisdiction, the 
event was one which was all-embracing in 
that there was no dweller in such towns 
who did not have some experience of the 
effects. But the reactions were many and 
exceedingly varied. There were the fearful 
folk who fled immediately and came back 
when peace was declared, there were those 
whose health gave way under the strain, 
others who slept through everything and 
those who never slept at all, some who 
were brave and thousands who were frankly 
panic-stricken ; there were heroic men and 
women who carried on sublimely indifferent 
to their own safety or feelings, and feeble 
creatures who gave way at the first warning 
maroon. From the reaction one could de- 
termine what must have been the dominant 
thoughts in each case, though it by no means 
followed that they were conscious thoughts 
at the moment. For instance, there were 



42 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

many who wished and tried to be brave, 
but in whom the subconscious fear element 
was too strongly entrenched to be dislodged 
by the comparatively weak conscious striv- 
ing, and thus they were fearful in spite of 
themselves. This at any rate demands 
the admission that man is not entirely at 
the mercy of circumstances. 

Just as we pinion the fleeting sound by 
the written symbol to give it permanency, 
so are passing circumstances given per- 
manence in the record of the mind. It is 
the record that counts, since, being regis- 
tered in the mind, it is henceforth part of 
ourselves ; the circumstances or events are 
in no other sense part of us. It is not, 
strictly speaking, the thing that makes any 
difference to us, it is the effect it induces 
that is of lasting moment ; and it is pre- 
cisely this effect whch we ourselves can 
control. A legacy rightly used may set a 
man on his financial legs and ensure him 
ease and comfort for the rest of his life, 
but, if he so wishes, it offers him also the 
opportunity of making all kinds of a fool 
of himself ; the effect depends upon himself 
and not merely upon the event. Unem- 
ployment doles may assist a genuine out-of- 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 43 

work over a difficult period and enable him 
to keep himself fit to do his best work as 
soon as the opportunity occurs ; on the 
other hand, it may pauperise and degrade 
the slacker still further, until finally he will 
do no work save under the spur of com- 
pulsion. The reaction is strictly according 
to the individual temperament, and it is 
this, not the dole, that sends a man up or 
down the path of his own evolution. War, 
we say, makes brutes of some men and 
heroes of others ; but it is not true. The 
men had made brutes or heroes of them- 
selves before the war, and the strife simply 
gave the occasion for them to demonstrate 
this. Circumstances, the things that are 
seen, are temporary ; but the reaction, 
which is often overlooked or unrecognised, 
is a matter of permanent moment. 

To revert for a moment to our simile of 
war making both brutes and heroes of men, 
it will be obvious that the particular reaction 
is determined by the individual's dominant 
ideas or master-thoughts, conscious or sub- 
conscious. It would be quite impossible for 
a man whose thoughts had for so long been 
cast in courageous mould that it had out- 
weighed any subconscious bias towards 



44 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

fear, and had become a firm master-thought 
— it would be impossible for such a man 
to play the coward. Did any selfish idea 
of personal advantage or shirking enter his 
mind it would immediately and automati- 
cally be countered by the strong bias of 
thinking on the heroic side ; there would be 
no conflict of thought, for the tide of brave 
thinking would simply sweep the paltry 
opposition away, as a river whirls a straw. 
This man, therefore, has risen above the 
temptation or even the possibility of 
cowardice, by determining his dominant 
ideas of bravery ; his reaction to the event 
is of necessity one of bravery ; and the 
circumstances, that might so affect other 
men, are powerless to make him afraid. 
He is to this extent a man freed by his own 
thinking from the thrall of fear, where 
others still remain fettered. This is indeed 
a fine thing to have demonstrated ; it is 
like a ray of sunshine striking through a 
cloud. We see that it is possible to render 
ourselves immune to the influence of some 
particular emotion, to raise ourselves above 
it so that it does not even provoke a con- 
flict ; and what is demonstrated by this 
brave man with regard to fear has its 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 45 

application, as a general principle, to any 
other emotion. A person who is provided 
by Nature, training, or endeavour with 
a master-thought of imperturbable good 
temper cannot be aroused to anger ; if he 
were so, it would be tantamount to saying 
that the master-thought could be overcome, 
in which case it would not be a permanent 
dominant. But to a man with this good 
temper dominant there might come pro- 
voking words, events, or circumstances, and 
yet they would induce no answering anger. 
Such disposition as there might have been, 
would have been balanced and neutralised 
by a corresponding measure of good thought, 
and a great volume of fine and stable think- 
ing would have established an equanimity 
that nothing could disturb. 

This is not intended to be poetry, fine 
writing, or yet advertising matter ; it is 
put forward as a sober counsel of sense. 
Steady work at thinking on directed lines 
produces master-thoughts, and these again 
determine the actions as occasions arise : 
it is possible to build positive master- 
thoughts so that the negatives lose all their 
power over us. Furthermore, circumstances 
that, as we say, " produce " these negative 



46 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

emotions as a general rule, are powerless to 
induce them when we have removed our- 
selves out of their jurisdiction. There is no 
reason why anyone should be angry, it 
merely has unpleasant effects in the in- 
dividual's inside, and certainly does no good 
to anyone else. To be angry with a person 
is to shoot an arrow at him, and to re- 
ceive damage to mind and body oneself. 
Build, by reiterated thought and earnest 
endeavour, a master-thought of self-control ; 
and when it is sufficiently established, the 
response to the anger stimulus will be greatly 
diminished and finally eliminated. There 
are people whom nothing angers and nothing 
disturbs, and they in their temperament 
show us that such is not a counsel of per- 
fection. In the same way it is possible to 
take the usual negative reactions that show 
themselves detrimental, and to build in 
their stead the positives ; in place of fear, 
to establish courage ; instead of pessimism, 
hopefulness ; for lack of will, decision ; 
and for depression, cheerfulness ; it is 
scarcely necessary to continue such a list 
to greater length. The general principle is 
sufficiently clear that circumstances invite, 
but do not control, reactions ; and further, 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 47 

that by regulating our master-thoughts we 
control and direct our own response. We 
are thus able to go about our daily work 
as self- controlled individuals whose tem- 
peramental machinery runs with a steady 
momentum, instead of being badgered and 
bustled into fits and friction, starts and 
stoppages, at the call of casual circum- 
stances. 

How Thinking Rules the Outlook 

We have seen how the perfect memory is 
always at work storing up our impressions, 
many of them being " taken down in 
evidence against us," and all infallibly 
recorded. The sum total of all these im- 
pressions is sometimes known as the 
" apperception mass," and it has a most 
important bearing upon everyday life. The 
sense messages we receive through sight or 
hearing or the other avenues are in essence 
but nerve impulses ; just as the words that 
we hear through the telephone are not words 
as they travel along the wire, but simply 
electrical impulses which must be turned 
into sounds intelligible to us by the vibrating 
membrane in the receiving instrument. 
Neither sight nor hearing are transmitted 



48 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

to the brain, but merely certain nervous 
impulses, and these need translation before 
their meaning can be apprehended. If we 
recall our early lessons in Latin and Greek, 
we know that a prime requisite was a good 
dictionary or lexicon from which to extract 
the meaning of the words we saw but did 
not understand ; to-day we are each of us 
compelled to compile our own dictionary of 
real life — it is the way we grow. The mass 
of recorded past impression is simply our 
lexicon, by the aid of which we translate the 
experiences that come to us. 

When we are born into the world there 
is nothing at all that consciousness has put 
into the dictionary, the pages of experience 
are blank, but it is no long while before we 
have ideas corresponding to food, sleep, 
comfort, warmth, pain, and so forth, in- 
scribed thereon. Once we have experienced 
a sensation it remains as a mental image in 
the mind and is recognised when it appears 
again ; the second experience is translated 
in the light of the first, and thus from small 
beginnings the dictionary quickly swells to 
vast proportions. Anything that has not 
yet come within our ken is naturally not 
represented in the dictionary, and is there- 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 49 

fore untranslatable, but we nevertheless 
make a mental note of it and are to an 
extent ready for its reappearance. When, 
for example, we hear a foreign language, 
the sounds reach us correctly enough, but 
they have no sense for us ; we have ears to 
hear, but hear not. When we see something 
foreign to our experience, we see but do not 
perceive. Unfamiliar words in our own 
language are in the same category ; they 
do not convey any meaning to us until we 
obtain a printed dictionary and look them 
up. We then transfer the meaning to our 
mental storehouse, and recognise them for 
the future. What applies to words and 
languages obviously also applies to events, 
people, circumstances, and everything else ; 
we recognise what we have experienced 
before because memory has written it in 
our dictionary, and we fail to recognise an 
unfamiliar thing simply because it is not 
there. 

Now this curious consideration arises, 
that since each man's dictionary is compiled 
by the fruits of his experience, it is there- 
fore purely individual. Since also no two 
people's experiences can possibly be identi- 
cal, therefore, also, no two dictionaries can 

4 



50 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

be the same. One translates a thing by this 
dictionary, and another by that ; naturally 
the two translations are often at variance. 
In point of fact, no two people view, or can 
possibly view, things, persons, and events 
in exactly the same way. How should 
they ? In actual life we know that a 
political event is viewed in diametrically 
opposite fashion by individuals of varying 
political views ; each translates the event 
by his own political dictionary. But 
directly we recognise that there is this 
psychological and logical ground for differ- 
ences of opinion, it becomes unnecessary 
to go about the world tilting at the wind- 
mills of views opposed to our own. We 
are not called upon to see eye to eye with 
each other, and indeed if we say that we 
do so, we are far from the truth ; but we 
may certainly hope and strive for some 
degree of mutual rhythm in the beating of 
our human hearts. 

This little matter of the apperception mass 
accounts for some teachers, who are com- 
pletely versed in their subjects, being totally 
unable to teach. They cannot get down to 
the level of their pupils. Quite obviously, 
the dictionary of teacher and taught are 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 51 

on very different lines— the teacher's full, 
and the pupil's empty ; consequently, what 
seems so obvious to the teacher is positively 
beyond the translating powers of the pupil. 
It is not that the latter is of necessity dull 
or stupid, it is merely that as regards the 
subject in hand he has comparatively little 
to go upon ; the wise teacher will suppose 
that his own dictionary is well-nigh as 
empty as that of his pupil, and then he will 
be able to comprehend the difficulties 
which, though they no longer exist for 
him, still have a very real existence for his 
pupil. One person sees estimable qualities 
in another which are not visible to someone 
else ; one person sees beauty where another 
sees drab ; one person hears Brahms and 
loves him in the symphony, while another 
says, " What is that stuff— why on earth 
don't they play some decent rag- time ? " ; 
an architect views a cathedral and takes in 
and appreciates the thousand and one 
details that go to make its beauty, to the 
philistine these do not exist. So one might 
multiply instances of the way in which 
this dictionary translates the wide world 
to us or keeps it a closed book, making 
divergences of view increase among us with 



52 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

every day that passes. Happy are those 
friends who travel the road together, seeing 
the same things, loving the same ideals, and 
looking for the same good God in every- 
thing ; they grow ever to a sweeter unity 
that is far more real than ever it appears. 

When our dictionary contains no reference 
to a given subject it naturally lessens our 
interest in it, whereas the more entries it 
contains the more interesting does the 
subject become. When we know something 
about a motor-car we notice the points of the 
cars we come across, and we see details that 
are non-existent for the person without car 
knowledge ; then cars become more inter- 
esting ; and the more we notice, the more 
facts are stored in our dictionary with regard 
to cars, until at length we grow into author- 
ities on the subject. The more knowledge 
we possess on the point of character-reading, 
the more interesting do the faces of our 
fellow-men become to us, and, as we gradu- 
ally learn to classify them into tj^pes with 
their special abilities and qualifications, so 
are we storing up in our mental records a 
mass of information which may prove to be 
not only of much interest, but also no little 
profit. On the contrary, it is quite easy 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 53 

to go about the world, as indeed most 
people do, blind-eyed and almost unseeing ; 
not being interested in things outside a very- 
limited circle, these convey but little to 
them, they stand for nothing in their lives. 
So the world grows very small to these 
shut-in folk and the whole fabric of their 
mental life is founded upon too small a base, 
which means that they are emphatically 
not as stable and poised as their better- 
grounded fellows. Their mooring-ropes to 
the landing-stage of reality are fewer, and 
it sometimes happens that the stream of 
events snaps these by some sudden strain, 
and they are swept away. But keen obser- 
vation, growing interest, and wider know- 
ledge are all linked together helping each 
other. 

There is a dual process at work in observa- 
tion, the eye sees — that is to say, it trans- 
mits the vibratory message from the outer 
world — but the recognition is supplied from 
within. Just how far each process extends 
it is extremely difficult to say ; sometimes 
we supply more recognition than the facts 
warrant, and then we see things that are 
not there. Walking along the road we see 
a dark patch ahead ; a dog, we say. As we 



54 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

approach nearer it does not seem to be a 
dog after all, and we conclude that it is 
some bundle of old rags dropped by a tramp ; 
but when we get up to it the patch is 
eventually seen to be a heap of stones. 
Recognition, however, had already supplied 
the dog, also the heap of clothes and the 
tramp ; so that it had travelled far further 
than the facts warranted and had led into 
delusion and error. It often does ; for we 
get into the way of seeing what we expect 
to see and what we look for. But, of course, 
the recognition and the things we expect to 
see are supplied by our old friend the apper- 
ception mass. It is therefore not wise, to 
say the least of it, to go about the daily 
activities looking for trouble ; we shall 
certainly find it. But how much of the 
element of trouble has been supplied from 
within ourselves ? Those excessively moral 
individuals who prowl around, hoping to 
be horrified and shocked by the flagrantly 
immoral, frequently see things that • are 
harmless enough in themselves ; but the 
immoral trimmings are plentifully supplied 
from their own apperception mass. Hence 
another scandal, and diatribes upon the 
inherent indecency of human beings. When 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 55 

a person possesses an apperception mass of 
suspicion, everything he views is tinged 
thereby, even the most simple transaction 
is viewed askance, and the motive of self- 
interest is detected everywhere. If one 
person is jealous of another, then nothing 
that that person can do is immune from 
reproach ; things are seen by the eye, but 
are invested with unwholesomeness by the 
apperception mass of the one who sees. 

We can thus see how the ideas that we 
have stored up in ourselves inevitably tint 
the world we look at and live in. It is 
as if we wore coloured spectacles, tinged 
according to the bias of our thinking. 
The pessimist always looks on the dark side 
of things ; in fact, he not only looks on, 
but for the darker elements ; of necessity 
that is the side he sees, and what he sees 
he stores up. What he stores up gives 
the tinge to his spectacles, and therefore 
to the world he sees ; so quite naturally 
he sees a pretty poor sort of world peopled 
by rather undesirable folk. Thinking like 
this gives him indigestion, so his nervous 
system suffers from impaired blood supply 
and loses tone ; then things look blacker 
than ever, and he can't make out what the 



56 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

world is coming to. As a matter of fact, 
there is nothing much the matter with the 
world, and he is merely suffering the natural 
result of compiling his dictionary solely of 
the words with nasty meanings. He pro- 
bably does not see that the unpleasant 
results are intended to point a moral and 
adorn a tale, and so he does nothing to 
alter things ; but we may be quite sure 
that things will get worse for him before 
they get better, while at some future stage 
in his evolution, depending mainly upon 
himself, he will see the error of his ways and 
learn sense. 

The optimist sees the world rose-colour, 
and the lover invests earth, sea, and sky 
with the glamour of his love ; and when the 
loved one flouts him the earth grows stale, 
and the sea becomes objectionable, and 
even the sky is a poor sort of thing and 
much overrated. What a magic there is 
in spectacles ! The ordered mind sees order : 
having rhythm in itself, it discerns the swing 
of Nature's pendulum, and realises that the 
discords of the music of life resolve in due 
course into concords. Man harps upon the 
discord as an end, Nature uses it as a means 
to an end — the sweetening of her harmonies ; 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 57 

everything depends upon the way in which 
we look at things, and this in turn upon the 
words of wisdom we collate in our diction- 
aries. We can make life fine by building 
ourselves of fine thinking and so viewing it 
finely, or we can do the very reverse. If 
love still lives in your heart, you may see 
the old tale sparkling its wireless messages 
in the eyes of the next boy and girl you meet 
arm in arm, and if your heart warms to 
them and begins to dance to the everlasting 
tune, then you may know that your years 
belie you and that you are not so old as you 
look, thank God. But look around you 
and you will see that nobody else seems to 
have eyes for the same couple and their 
heart-throbs, and if you could look in the 
dictionary of the onlookers' hearts and could 
turn up the word " love," you would find 
it neatly crossed out in red ink and marked 
" gone away," or else you would find it had 
never been there at all. There are people 
like that. 

Exploring the Mind 

During the last thirty years or so a method 
of dealing with the hidden contents of the 
mind, known as Psycho-Analysis, has been 
evolved. The technique is still more or less 



58 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

in the experimental stage, but the results 
already achieved are remarkable, and the 
future possibilities very great. The unfor- 
getting memory, not only as a record of our 
every experience, but also as a heritage of 
age-long stored-up experiences of the race, 
is once more at the root of affairs. Events 
that have long passed out of memory are 
shown frequently to be disturbing influences 
in the mind, producing far-reaching and 
most unexpected results ; and it is not until 
this cause is probed and the worrying in- 
fluence discharged that the evil effects can 
usually be remedied. In many cases, in- 
quiry into the dreams of the individual will 
give a clue as to the origin of the trouble, 
or the clever analyst may find his indications 
in the confidences of the patient. Under 
what is known as the word-association 
method test-words are given, and the 
patient, lying comfortably and unrestrained 
in an armchair, is asked to give the first 
companion word that enters his mind. The 
times of response are carefully noted to a 
fifth of a second by stop-watch, and it is 
found that when the test-word threatens 
to touch the source of the trouble, the 
patient's unconscious self seeks to throw 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 59 

the analyst off the track by giving some 
irrelevant or innocuous word. But this 
takes time, and the interval of response 
shows such a marked lengthening that the 
analyst knows at once that he is hitting 
upon some repressed thought influence. 
The subconscious (or, as it is more generally 
termed in Psycho- Analysis, the " Uncon- 
scious ") thus overreaches itself ; and by 
following up the clue thus given the analyst 
is often able to effect a complete cure. 

A number of unexpected results spring 
from this study, and we learn of many 
conflicts going on in the mind, of which we 
are completely unaware, fretting away the 
nervous energy or distorting the mental 
outlook. Particularly so is this in relation 
to sexual and kindred subjects, and in this 
study the word " sexual " is used in its 
very widest sense, embracing not only all 
appertaining to love, but all that is signifi- 
cant of that urge to better things which 
impels the world. The sex instinct is one 
of the most deeply embedded influences 
within us, and we are totally unable to 
eliminate its workings, try as we may. 
But mistaken religious teachings have for 
so long characterised " brother body " as 






60 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

vile and the enemy of the spirit, that there 
has gradually grown up the idea that 
anything connected with the function of 
sex is a matter for shame. Therefore, there 
are many who, having felt the promptings 
of some desire implanted by Nature for 
her purposes, conceive it to be wickedness. 
They have accepted the current official 
anathema, and between this censorious 
standard and their natural impulses there 
arises a conflict between repression and 
expression. On the one hand we have 
Nature seeking to find means of expression 
through channels that are normal and pure, 
and on the other we find the repressive 
forces of social and religious ideals at work 
in combat. Nature, however, will not be 
gainsaid ; not for nothing has she stored up 
the thinking of countless generations to be 
the legacy of the individual, and if the 
normal outlet be prohibited she finds one 
in another direction. Hence arise a host 
of troubles, physical as well as mental, 
frictions innumerable, and aberrations of 
sex, countless in form and widespread in 
result. 

The sense of fitness of things, social and 
domestic, which has gradually been im- 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 61 

posed upon us by use, education, and public 
opinion is usually at work within us as a 
species of censor forbidding utterance to 
many of the ideas that might otherwise 
come into the mind ; but since they cannot 
be entirely suppressed, they disguise them- 
selves or undergo a measure of distortion, 
so that they eventually outwit the censor 
and issue forth camouflaged out of recog- 
nition. For example, the affection and 
emotion that should be bestowed upon 
children by a potential mother is often, in 
the absence of its legitimate object, trans- 
ferred to pet dogs, cats, or other animals. 
A man who is hen-pecked at home finds 
one side of his nature repressed, and is 
consequently apt to find that the expression 
of that force results in taking it out of the 
people in the office ; his meekness to his 
wife is compensated by his rudeness to 
other people under his control. Frequently 
dreams act as a species of safety valve, and 
a repressed instinct may find its disguised 
expression and manifestation in fantasy. 
On occasion the knocking at the bedroom 
door as an intimation that it is time to get 
up sometimes weaves itself into a dream of 
bombardment — an attempt on the part of 



62 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

Nature to pass reality off as dream-stuff 
and so to preserve the slumbers. 

Ardent desires, unaccomplished in real 
life, are apt to reach their consummation in 
dreams, for in the sleep state, as in hypnosis, 
the conscious reasoning powers are, as it 
were, out of mesh, and the subconscious 
mind is away at full speed on top gear. 
Or, to take another simile, consciousness 
is like the resistance and the control that 
water offers to the propeller of the steam- 
ship ; but the dream state represents the 
" racing " of the engines when the stern of 
the vessel lifts out of the water and the 
normal resistance is removed. The analysis 
of dreams is thus often very illuminating 
and offers a means of diagnosing the re- 
pressed instincts and thoughts that are 
striving for outlet. There is a technique of 
the imagery of dream, and from experience 
the analyst learns to perceive reason behind 
the apparent inconsequence ; he knows, of 
course, that the ideas thus expressed are 
rarely to be taken at their face value, 
but that the symbolic nature of the dream 
is a puzzle which it is his task to solve. 
The physician to the mind must become, 
like Joseph became to Pharaoh, an in- 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 63 

terpreter of dreams. But the matter has 
an even wider bearing ; there is no hard- 
and-fast dividing line between the normal 
and the abnormal, between the sane and the 
insane. Indeed, most people have mental 
spots that are at any rate weaker than 
others. Insanity itself, we are beginning to 
learn, is not completely irrational ; virtues 
when carried to excess become vices, and 
normal processes of mind when over-em- 
phasised tend to merge into lack of balance. 
While these processes are buried in obscurity 
and operate in ways which we do not 
understand, we can do little to cope with 
them. But, as in other directions, with 
increasing knowledge will come an increasing 
control over abnormal mental states, and 
we may hope for a better and more in- 
telligent treatment of the insane. This 
reform, at any rate, is long overdue. 

Life is expression ; in the plant world 
the amateur gardener knows this only too 
well. He may chop off the heads of con- 
volvulus or balsam as soon as they appear, 
but the plant is in no way discouraged ; 
its sole business is to express itself, and it 
does this by sending up more shoots and 
yet more, if not in one place then in another. 



64 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

In the end the plant generally beats the 
gardener. Indeed, if expression did not as 
a rule triumph over repression Nature might 
find herself in some difficulty. In the mind 
an unpleasant memory of childhood re- 
pressed may seek to find some avenue 
of expression, and it may hit upon a per- 
verted means ; for instance, a trifling pecca- 
dillo in early days as to honesty might cause 
a conflict with the moral sense, and because 
it was an unpleasant subject to think upon 
it would be repressed into the depths of 
the mind, and perhaps completely for- 
gotten. But in later life the form of its 
expression might be that of an exaggerated 
regard for other people's honesty. The sex 
instinct that has found no outlet in normal 
mating may find perverted expression in 
prudery or excessive modesty, or perhaps 
in prurience or abnormal sexual practices. 
The character that is itself not above sus- 
picion may show a meticulous regard for 
correctness in other people's affairs, which 
may even grow into a devastating suspicion 
of anyone and everyone else. Many of 
the fears that fasten themselves upon the 
mind may be traced back to some unpleasant 
episode or shock in earlier days, even though 



THOUGHT AND ITS INFLUENCE 65 

this may have passed — apparently — com- 
pletely from the memory. Indeed, the 
whole subject resolves itself into a vast 
commentary upon the far-spreading results 
of thought, conscious and unconscious, and 
of the exceedingly intricate processes by 
which it works. 

It may not be out of place here to refer 
to " fixed " ideas as being one of the well- 
recognised aberrations of thought ; it is 
generally regarded as symptomatic of in- 
sanity, but we would point out that a fixed 
idea is merely a wrong dominant. We are 
all of us possessed of fixed ideas of honesty, 
morality, justice, etc. — or, at any rate, let 
us do ourselves the credit of believing so. 
These are indeed very necessary to a 
rational life, for we certainly have no time 
to debate the pros and cons of honesty on 
every occasion an issue arises. We build 
a dominant of honesty, and any question 
is thus automatically judged without con- 
scious attention. But it becomes a different 
matter when a person develops a fixed idea 
that he is the Deity, or that he has com- 
mitted the unpardonable sin. These are 
delusions, and brand their owner as un- 
balanced. It is, however, most probable 

5 



66 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

that even delusions such as these also owe 
their origin to some conflict in the under- 
mind, or to the perpetuation of dreamlike 
conditions in which the individual has taken 
refuge in preference to facing reality. Day- 
dreaming is often thus an interior state 
welcomed as a relief from the stress of reality, 
but it has distinct dangers in that it tends to 
put the dreamer out of touch with the outer 
world ; these dreams are recorded by the 
subconscious, and thus the dreamer fashions 
an unreal world for himself wherein, per- 
haps, he may be, so far as he is concerned, 
the Deity or the unpardonable sinner. 
This way madness lies, but it shows how 
fatally easy is the road of introspection or 
selfish imaginings, and by what a natural 
process come these irrationally exaggerated 
ideas of self-importance or guilt. It surely 
constitutes a vital argument for thought- 
control that we have here demonstrated 
the consequences of allowing the thought 
processes to take charge of us, and dis- 
regarding the effects of thoughts which, 
though out of sight, are never out of 
mind. 



CHAPTER II 

THOUGHT AND HEALTH 

Mind and Body 

The standard of health accepted by the 
ordinary individual is needlessly, and even 
discouragingly, low ; we tolerate, as civil- 
ised beings, a state of general health far 
below that of wild animals and savages. 
This is very largely owing to the fact that 
we are as a rule unaware of the real bases 
of well-being, and are mostly ignorant of 
the extremely close and vital connection 
between mind and body. We know, of 
course, that we feel better in health when 
we are happy, and below par in body when 
we are miserable of mind ; but often we do 
not see the implications of big, broad facts 
of this description. It is our present pur- 
pose to show the close and intimate way in 
which body and mind act together ; that, 
although their functions are totally distinct 
and apparently to a large degree inde- 

67 



68 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

pendent, yet they are necessarily bound 
together in the closest of partnerships. 
Like partnerships in the world of business, 
this co-working needs to be very carefully 
considered, because each partner is to a 
large extent responsible for the deed of 
the other and liable to share the conse- 
quences, even to the paying of the debts 
incurred. It may be likened again to the 
marriage partnership, the success of which 
is entirely dependent upon the degree of 
harmony ; while husband and wife are at 
one in aims and ideals, the harmony may 
be of one type or another, but so long as it 
arises from regular and rhythmic vibra- 
tions it is at any rate musical. It is far 
otherwise, however, when the vibrations of 
mutual thought are irregular and at cross 
purposes, for then instead of music they 
produce noise and discord. So between 
mind and body harmony spells health, and 
discord disease. 

The body is the servant of the mind, or 
perhaps more properly the instrument of 
the mind ; what the mind itself is we 
scarcely claim to know. We know that 
when we move we do so by the action of 
the muscles, the muscles contract owing to 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 69 

a nervous impulse from a motor centre in 
the brain, this in turn has been stimulated 
from a higher centre ; but even so we have 
only pursued the process from pillar to post. 
What caused the higher centre to become 
active ? The thought that started the 
process seemed in its origin to be quite 
spontaneous. It may possibly have come 
from the ceaseless working of the under- 
mind, or in response to some message of 
sense from the outside world, or possibly 
again from some message received all 
unconsciously from an outside source; but 
a spontaneous thought, strictly speaking, 
is as unthinkable as a causeless action. 
Wherever we follow up sufficiently far we 
find that we outrange the purely physical, 
and we are unable to regard the body save 
as registering the effects of mind. The 
effects of thought are registered in the brain, 
but who was the thinker ? Controversy 
has raged for ages upon this and similar 
points, but the plain man, unversed in 
dialectical subtleties, will not be far wrong 
in recognising himself in the person of the 
thinker. It is scarcely possible to go behind 
or beyond this position at the moment ; it 
suffices that we should regard ourselves as 



70 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

the thinkers, with the nervous system as 
the intricate machinery of thinking, and the 
body to register, carry out, or act upon 
the various thoughts. The complexity of 
the nervous system rises parallel with the 
capacity to think ; plants have no nervous 
system and impulses are transmitted from 
cell to cell ; animals in their varied species 
have all types from the most rudimentary 
up to those which probably exceed in de- 
velopment the nervous equipment of the 
elementary human. The average nervous 
system to-day is an instrument of intricacy 
and efficiency which represents the highest 
achievement of evolution within our ken. 

The body, however, is scarcely less a 
" fearful and wonderful " thing ; we know 
more about it, but we do not understand it. 
Professor Barrett remarks that the most 
up-to-date of chemists with all his resources 
cannot turn a bundle of hay into milk ; 
but the cow can. So the cow, although 
Professor Barrett does not specifically say 
so, is one up on the chemist. The ordinary 
person knows very much less about his 
body than he does about his clothes or his 
bicycle ; he also takes less care of it, on the 
principle, it may be supposed, that both 



V 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 71 

clothes and bicycle cost him money while 
his body was given to him free. The aim 
of Nature seems to have been to produce 
a " fool-proof " piece of mechanism, and 
she has largely succeeded ; but no machine 
could possibly endure the treatment that 
some people accord to their bodies, though 
it is certainly a testimony to her workman- 
ship that the average age of breakdown is 
delayed to forty- two years or thereabouts. 
This refers of course to final death, but St 
Paul was perfectly accurate when he said 
that " I die daily " ; in point of fact we all 
do. Perhaps he did not mean it in its 
literal sense, but even so it would stand as 
a scientific statement. Parts of us are 
dying all the time. A certain number of 
the inhabitants of a town die every year, 
and after a generation or so there are com- 
paratively few original survivors ; yet the 
town is the same town. So with ourselves, 
cells in great numbers die daily ; work, 
play, thinking, and every other form of 
activity, even laziness, break them down. 
They pass out of the body, and, from the 
food we eat, fresh cells are formed to take 
their place. New skin forms quickly over 
a wound, hair grows so quickly that a man 



72 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

needs must shave every morning of his life 
to keep his appearance acceptable to his 
own self-respect, and to retain the due 
regard of the opposite sex. Nails re-form 
in a matter of a few weeks, bones unite 
when broken, and scars vanish ; all as 
testimony to the fact that man dies daily 
and necessarily, too, daily rebuilds. We 
need not concentrate upon the dying part, 
it is much more comforting to confine our 
attention to the resurrecting and recon- 
structing element. 

We are a commonwealth of cells, each 
cell with its appropriate functions ; cells 
divided into kinds and classes, forms and 
diversities — each cell in its own way a 
specialist. While they are united and work 
harmoniously they live and flourish in the 
health of the community; but when they 
go on strike, have lock-outs, or indulge in 
passive resistance, then friction, ill-health, 
and disease take their toll of the com- 
munity. But when they unanimously de- 
cide upon a ""sauve qui pent" each one 
for himself, then of course the body perishes 
as a commonwealth, becoming excessively 
alive in its individual cells. Like a nation 
unable to compose its differences, it under- 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 73 

goes decomposition. Sectional and indi- 
vidual interests placed before that of the 
community result in the break-up of the 
whole. The body is said to be never more 
alive than when it is dead, but it is the 
liveliness of dust scurrying back to dust 
and ashes to ashes. Food is a necessity 
which we rarely overlook in the body, but 
which is sadly neglected in the realm of 
mind ; for many good folk think that they 
learned all that there was to learn at school. 
Therefore we meet with so much veneer 
which passes for education, so much worldly 
wisdom which masquerades as understand- 
ing, and so little clear vision ; it is not the 
amount of academic lore which a man has 
accumulated in the grey matter of his 
brain that counts, it is the amount of 
learning which he is able to put to the prac- 
tical end of living more usefully. Mental 
digestion is as true and necessary a process 
as physical, and it is not what we take in, 
but what we assimilate, that does us the 
good ; yet unless we take in something we 
shall starve. There is a vast amount of 
mental starvation in the world to-day, but 
unfortunately it does not give rise to such 
pains as compel attention to the needs of 



74 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

the body ; and so it tends to continue. 
The pains to which it does give rise, being 
of a different order, are rarely referred to 
their true source, and so escape attention. 

With due regard to the intake of new 
ideas and the awakening to progressive 
thought, and with the discarding of old 
waste material and outworn ideas, the mind 
grows. The body comes comparatively 
early to maturity, but since the convolu- 
tions of the brain appear to increase with 
the development of the mental powers, 
there seems to be no reason why the 
maturity of the mind should not be a 
progressive maturity without any actual 
climax ; probably the only real limit is the 
decay of the bodily powers, when one of 
the partners growing decrepit begins to let 
the other down. But of one thing we may 
be quite certain, that directly mental 
growth stops mental decay sets in ; when 
the locomotive stops running about it 
ceases to be a locomotive, and when the 
burglar gives up burgling he may or may 
not become an honest man, but he ceases 
to be a burglar. When a thinking machine 
ceases to work, it is on the high road to 
the scrap-heap. But in the ordinary alert 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 75 

person neither mind nor body are fixed 
things, but they are both ever changing, 
ever being renewed, never finished, never 
fixed. To-morrow never finds us the same 
as to-day ; cells may come and cells may 
go, but we go on for ever in a sense. Three 
years hence will find us with never a cell 
that exists in the body to-day, with a wealth 
of new ideas and impressions that will make 
the mind a very different thing ; we shall 
be totally different individuals, and yet the 
same. But herein is the spur to action and 
the promise of success, it is the thinking of 
to-day that makes the man of to-morrow. 

We acknowledge, as a general proposi- 
tion, that mind and body affect one another, 
but it is left to those who have investigated 
the subject of health to realise to the full 
how completely they are interdependent. 
We have seen them each in a state of 
plasticity and perpetual growth, but the 
connection is much closer than this, for 
there is no ripple upon the surface of one 
that does not produce its effect upon the 
other ; there is no fixity and no more than 
a fictitious independence. Thoughts come 
and, as we think, go ; but when they have 
departed they have left their permanent 



76 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

mark upon both mind and body. A period 
of mental worry or strain may so sap the 
vitality as to be indicated in the finger-nails 
by a very perceptible thinning across the 
nail, and as the rate of growth of the nail 
is more or less constant the breadth of the 
thin ridge will give some indication of the 
period of depressed vitality. If the de- 
pression be severe the nail may become so 
thin that at a later stage it breaks across. 
Thus we see that worry of mind has pro- 
duced changes in the body, and these can 
by no means be neglected ; the nail has 
given outward and visible signs of an in- 
ward and perhaps imperceptible lack of 
nutrition, but we may be quite sure that 
the weakness thus registered in the nail has 
also taken similar toll of every organ in the 
body. The instantaneous manner in which 
some mental influences produce physical 
results is shown in the way in which an idea 
makes some folk blush ; the changes brought 
about in the circulation are self-evident and 
extensive. In the same way we talk about 
emotions making us go hot or cold all over, 
or perhaps the cheek blanches or profuse 
perspiration breaks out — all these testify 
to the physical results of mental states. 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 77 

On the other hand we scarcely need to 
labour the point of the effect that the physi- 
cal condition exerts upon the mentality ; 
it is easy enough to recognise the enervating 
effects of ill-health upon mental processes. 
Being ill, we know that we are in no con- 
dition to tackle our problems efficiently, 
we lose the due balance of affairs, and 
things that in the ordinary way would be 
insignificant assume vast proportions. Sea- 
sickness is a splendid example of the way 
these mental effects follow physical causes, 
for the sufferer from mal de mer would 
probably merely murmur a green and pallid 
" thank you " if we were to endeavour to 
throw him overboard. But as soon as the 
vessel keeps an even keel, or land is reached, 
one can see the mental barometer of each 
quondam sufferer rising with incredible 
rapidity. It is generally considered im- 
possible to be cheerful with a bilious attack, 
or hilarious with the toothache, and it is 
not even likely that one could deliver a 
satisfactory lecture in tight shoes. It is 
when we are " out of sorts " that things go 
wrong at the office and we make mistakes 
or forget things, or we make the inappro- 
priate decision that lands us in difficulties 



78 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

later on. It will not be hard, therefore, for 
anyone in view of such considerations as 
these to admit that mind influences body, 
and vice versa ; cheerfulness promotes well- 
being and well-being again assists cheerful- 
ness, while lowered vitality invites mental 
depression and this again lowers the body 
tone. So we go revolving, mind and body 
continuously working in a circle, helpful 
or vicious as the case may be. But unless 
we are to be whirled downhill in this way 
when the results are bad, we must break 
the circle at some point ; and although due 
attention must be accorded to the body, 
yet the decisive method is always by the 
application of Will. We may not be able 
to induce an immediate improvement in 
the health, but we can always change the 
current of the thoughts. 

Between the violent anger-thought that 
perhaps results in apoplexy, or the mental 
shock that blanches the hair or produces 
paralysis, down to the fleeting thought that 
apparently exercises no effect at all, there 
are variations of every possible degree in 
the effects of thoughts upon the body ; but 
every thought has some effect. Naturally 
it is the strong emotion that gives the 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 79 

marked and lasting result, but we are not 
entitled to say that any emotion or any 
thought at all is devoid of result ; in fact, 
quite the reverse. We have seen that under 
hypnosis practically anything can be re- 
called, but it obviously can only be recalled 
by virtue of its being in existence in the 
mind — that is to say, because it has left the 
brain different for its coming. But again, 
without pursuing any hair-splitting argu- 
ments, the prime fact to be acknowledged 
is the way in which mind and body play 
echo to each other, and the further de- 
duction that since this is so, every thought 
matters both mentally and physically. 

Effects of Suggestion 

The dominance of mind over the body 
and the extraordinary way in which re- 
markable changes may be accomplished by 
mental influence is nowhere shown more 
plainly than in the phenomena of hypno- 
tism and suggestion. The study of hyp- 
notic experiment shows us that the mere 
word of command from the operator is 
sufficient to produce very astonishing effects 
upon the organism of his hypnotised sub- 
ject. Quite early in the history of hypnosis 



80 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

Dr Esdaile was performing amputations 
and other major operations under its in- 
fluence, and the patients as a rule fared 
rather better than they do to-day under 
the ordinary anaesthetics. It is indeed an 
astonishing thing that such complete and 
absolute obliviousness to pain can be pro- 
duced by mere suggestion — by the spoken 
word. But these experiments were not 
followed up to any large extent because 
just about that particular period chloro- 
form came into use, and offering many 
advantages over hypnosis on the score of 
convenience, and owing to the fact that 
anyone can administer chloroform when by 
no means everyone can hypnotise, it was 
preferred before it. 

Not only can this complete obliviousness 
to pain be produced by suggestion, but local 
anaesthesia may also be induced, and feeling 
be inhibited in any particular direction. 
It is also sufficient to assure a hypnotised 
person that he can see everyone in the 
room except so-and-so in order to render 
that person completely invisible to him, 
although he is perfectly able to see every 
other person. He may also be induced to 
swallow and enjoy paraffin under the im- 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 81 

pression that he is drinking port wine, and, 
still more to be wondered at, the actual 
effect upon his body will probably be that of 
port and not paraffin. With greatest of 
ease and frequently without any resort to 
hypnotic sleep at all, a person at the word of 
command will be unable to unclasp his 
hands, or bend his arm, or his leg, as the case 
may be ; the simple suggestion, " Now, 
you can't unclasp your hands," spoken so 
as to impress the subject strongly is enough 
to inhibit his muscular action. Blisters 
have also been raised upon the skin, and 
almost any degree of muscular rigidity or 
catalepsy may readily be decreed. The 
state of sleep or trance can deepen till the 
stage of coma be reached, and it may equally 
well be extended or terminated at once by 
the spoken word of the operator. The 
temperature may vary, rising or falling at 
the appropriate suggestion, and the pulse 
may be accelerated or retarded by the 
same means. 

Suggestion as used in therapeutics has 
a record of extraordinary cures to its credit, 
symptoms subside as if by magic in many 
cases, and, contrary to general opinion, it 
is not merely nervous ills that yield to 



82 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

mental treatment. Practically every dis- 
ease involves some tissue change, and the 
difference between diseases that are termed 
functional and those described as organic 
is principally one of degree. It is impossible 
to draw any hard-and-fast line of distinction, 
neither is it feasible to deny the influence 
of suggestion in toto in any particular case ; 
even in those cases where one would hesitate 
to claim any direct benefit from suggestion, 
its assistance in promoting sleep, reducing 
pain, and generally alleviating the suffering 
of the patient is by no means to be despised. 
Christian Science devotes itself to working 
upon the body through the mind, although 
specific suggestion is not a professed means 
of cure. It is, however, quite impossible to 
secure immunity from the effects of sugges- 
tion, even though unintentional and un- 
suspected, and there can be little doubt that 
its workings are in the most cases present 
though denied. The point to be empha- 
sised is that Christian Science has many 
wonderful cures to its credit. One of the 
most remarkable that we call to mind at 
the moment is that of a medical man who, 
to his horror, discovered himself to be 
suffering from leprosy ; there seemed to be 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 83 

no doubt about the diagnosis, and he was 
in despair, knowing in his capacity as a 
doctor the terrible nature of his complaint. 
As a last resort he consulted a Christian 
Science practitioner, and as a result was 
almost forthwith cured. So much im- 
pressed was he with the circumstances that 
he at once relinquished his orthodox medical 
work in favour of the Christian Science 
mental work. There are also other cults 
and isms in plenty which can point to 
effects scarcely less wonderful, and the 
general run of such instances serves to 
bear witness that almost anything is within 
the range of accomplishment through the 
agency of the mind working upon the body. 
Granted that many of these cases were 
fortuitous and that it may not be possible 
to repeat them, it simply means that, under 
conditions which have not yet been fully 
ascertained, miracles have happened ; when 
we have learnt more about the technique 
of miracles no doubt they will happen to 
order instead of by chance. 

In the cases we have been considering, 
the element of suggestion has been supplied 
from outside by some other person ; in 
hypnosis it is the operator who supplies 



84 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

the actual suggestion. But, as we have 
pointed out in other writings, the suggestion 
may also be supplied from within by the 
individual himself, and this process is known 
by the rather hybrid term auto-suggestion. 
It means that the individual subjects him- 
self to feebler doses of his own influence, a 
kind of suggestion- and- water ; but to make 
up for this dilution he is able to take the 
doses more frequently and for a longer 
period, and as he wants them. This plan 
has decided advantages. We have come 
across individuals who could accelerate the 
heart-beat at will ; this, of course, seems a 
curious statement at first sight, but when 
we consider that the simple receipt of a 
telegram will often cause the same effect, 
there seems no particular reason why a 
person should not be able to achieve some- 
thing of the same result by concentrating 
upon it. Some people can drive away 
minor aches and pains by force of will, 
or by directing the thoughts to some other 
topic ; if we really get interested and keen 
upon some work in hand, it is quite possible 
that we may even overlook the necessity 
for lunch. The mind is the dominant 
partner, and by its stability and poise it 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 85 

enables the body to weather many a storm ; 
but if the mind itself be unstable and 
erratic, or full of fear, the natural control 
is weakened and forces begin to run astray, 
and presently instead of ease and well- 
being in the body there is instability and 
disease. 

We may thus trace the well-nigh supreme 
effect of the mind upon the body, working 
through the agency of suggestion ; and this 
recognition is but the step preliminary to 
making use of the agency of mind to achieve 
something so] id and substantial in the way 
of more and better health. There is no 
special value in mere knowing, unless we 
turn the knowledge to practical account. 

Unconscious Suggestion 

The type of suggestion to which we have 
just been making reference is one which is 
both plain and obvious, the command being 
given in so many words. But suggestion is 
also at work in a much more insidious 
fashion, of which, for the most part, we are 
completely unconscious. Therefore, since 
we do not recognise that there are any 
forces at work, their operations become 
doubly dangerous. The spoken word is 



86 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

merely one way of formulating a suggestion ; 
there are countless other methods. For 
example, when we are unable to go to sleep 
at night the insomnia itself acts as a powerful 
suggestion, and after our efforts to obtain 
sleep have proved fruitless for hour after 
hour, the idea that we cannot go to sleep 
has obtained a remarkably strong hold upon 
us. When under such circumstances we try 
to find relief by the agency of suggestion, 
by thinking or saying that we are sleepy 
and are now just going to drop off, this 
contrary suggestion of the insomnia itself 
neutralises and renders futile our own en- 
deavour towards sleep. Pain is also an 
unspoken suggestion of this type, and we 
have often enough heard the sufferer give 
voice to the idea prompted by pain, " Oh, 
I am so ill ! " Surroundings have a sug- 
gestive value which is frequently unrecog- 
nised, and again we may find a clue in the 
unpremeditated remark, as when entering 
a dimly lighted apartment we say, " Oh, 
what a wretched light ! " There is indeed 
a suggestion of wretchedness about a poorly 
illuminated room which is conspicuously 
absent from the brilliantly lighted chamber. 
There is a suggestion of comfort, ease, and 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 87 

comparative opulence about the first-class 
railway carriage or saloon which is totally 
lacking in the dingy, grimy third-class 
smoker ; and beyond doubt this produces 
in us some unconscious reflex which shows 
that we have responded to the influence of 
our surroundings. Further than this, we may 
recognise that the weather, the people we 
come across, the clothes we wear, the things 
we talk about, and the duties we perform 
all exercise suggestion upon ourselves, 
while we scarcely realise that we are being 
influenced. Who would have thought, for 
example, that if a girl at repetition work 
on a black machine can turn out so much 
work per hour, the amount of work she does 
will be unconsciously increased by painting 
the black machine white ? Yet experiment 
has shown this to be the case. 

We were interested in the case of a lady 
who, through the shock of her son's death, 
entirely lost her voice. Six or nine months 
of this voicelessness began to exercise 
suggestion of an irritant type upon her in 
various other directions. Her eyes began 
to give trouble and her nerves showed signs 
of approaching breakdown ; but the par- 
alysis of the vocal cords was purely of a 



88 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

functional nature, and with appropriate 
methods we were able to restore the voice 
almost immediately. With the removal of 
the irritant effect of the loss of voice the 
eyes and general nervous condition at once 
improved. The connection between the 
voice, the eyes, and the nerves was mental, 
and therefore we attribute it to the workings 
of unconscious suggestion. But we observe 
the same principle in a much more prosaic 
way when we find articles of diet that we 
expect to disagree with us do really and 
truly produce indigestion. There is no 
necessity for us to say specifically, in the 
form of a definite command to the sub- 
conscious, " Now, you are totally unable to 
digest pastry, it will cause you severe pain ! " 
it is quite sufficient for us to think it, and 
the thinking acts in the unconscious way 
we are endeavouring to illustrate, and in- 
digestion and pain result. Many good 
people make martyrs of themselves in this 
unnecessary way, and when they get the 
indigestion they point to it triumphantly, 
albeit unconsciously again, as if to say they 
knew it would follow in due course. They 
entirely fail to recognise that a different 
suggestion would produce a different result, 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 89 

since they are the sport of a force the 
existence of which they do not so much as 
suspect. 

There are other worthy individuals to 
whom the suggestion of a draught of fresh 
air is warrant for a chill or cold, " I know 
I shall have a wretched cold to-morrow," 
and lo ! the thing they fear comes upon them. 
Contrast this with the attitude of the man 
who assures himself and us, " Fresh air's 
good ; I never get colds, I'm as hard as 
nails ! " Which of the two attitudes is the 
more likely to promote health ? Yet both 
are attitudes built up of the thoughts, only 
the one is negative and detrimental and 
the other positive and protective ; by their 
fruits we know them. Infection, again, 
seems to discriminate in its incidence and 
to fall with special frequency upon those who 
let fear-thoughts run riot in their minds ; 
fear, working through the agency of the 
sympathetic nervous system, is a great de- 
pressant and lowers the normal resisting 
power, thus laying the individual open to 
attacks from which with better thinking he 
might have been immune. 

We saw in the previous chapter that all 
thinking is stored up and possesses a 



90 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

cumulative value ; therefore all thoughts 
upon the question of disease or health are 
on permanent record within, giving us an 
unconscious bias in one or other direction. 
But it is rare that the bias is in favour of 
health. Why should it be, since we, for 
the most part, take health for granted and 
principally remark, think upon, and discuss 
disease and the unpleasant things of life ? 
It seems to be, as a rule, only when one is 
in love that the finer things of life attain a 
vivid existence and discussion, only then 
does the vision really clear ; probably that 
is why the pessimist sneers that love is 
blind. But, at any rate, people in love do 
not discuss their diseases and spend the fleet- 
ing hours retailing unpleasant symptoms, 
as do so many people who are obviously out 
of love ; all these pestilential discussions, 
all these disease-ridden thoughts necessarily 
become part of them, and in time give a 
strong bias and predisposition towards dis- 
ease. It is to this source that we may 
with confidence point as the origin of much 
preventable ill-health, and the practice of a 
little mental hygiene in getting rid of dis- 
ease-thoughts would assuredly do much 
towards ensuring a higher standard of 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 91 

general health. It is not necessary that 
children should go through the whole round 
of childish complaints — measles, chicken- 
pox, mumps, and so on ; indeed, we venture 
to assert that, when adults think along 
more reasonable lines, infantile disease will 
show a marked diminution. If we want 
health, we must think it ; if we talk 
disease, we shall probably (and deservedly) 
get it. 

This unconscious suggestion is also at 
work trying to shorten our lives for us ; we 
grow old partly because it has become gener- 
ally accepted as the proper thing to do. 
Since the Psalmist fixed upon his purely 
arbitrary threescore years and ten we are 
apt to consider it as scarcely decent to 
exceed the conventional limit by lagging 
superfluous on life's stage to fourscore 
years or more. Besides, in case we should 
be tempted to carry on beyond the appro- 
priate limit, the Psalmist puts in a depress- 
ing suggestion about a man's strength, over 
seventy, being but labour and sorrow. But 
one of the most active old gentlemen we 
ever knew worked till he was close upon 
ninety, and at responsible work too, and 
died of nothing in particular at ninety-five 



92 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

— a most lively refutation of the depressing 
old-age theory, and a living skit upon the 
" too-old-at-forty " school. We must pro- 
test against the perpetuation of these ill- 
founded and untrue asservations, because 
through the agency of unconscious sugges- 
tion they exercise such a harmful effect upon 
the thoughtless. We must necessarily think 
something, then by all that is sane let us 
choose the things that are likely to help 
rather than harm us. Why should people 
who go to Church to give thanks and to grow 
in spiritual wisdom and stature, fill their 
subconscious minds with perverted sugges- 
tions to the effect that 

" Brief life is here our portion, 
Brief sorrow, short-lived care." 

By so doing they tend to make life even 
briefer than it need be, and put into it 
more sorrow and care in advance than it 
rightfully contains ; the whole thing is on 
a par with the pernicious proverb which 
asserts that " man is born to trouble as the 
sparks fly upwards." Nonsense ! Man is 
born to health and happiness, to progress 
and spiritual development, to long life and 
usefulness, to love and beauty ; and he will 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 93 

reach all these much sooner if he elects to 
make suggestion, whether it works con- 
sciously or unconsciously in his life, prove 
an uplifting element rather than a perpetual 
depressant. 

Optimism and Pessimism 

It is a perfectly true saying that it takes 
all sorts to make a world ; but it is an open 
question as to whether some of the sorts 
could not be dispensed with to the benefit 
of the world in general. The difference in 
essentials between an optimist and a pessi- 
mist lies in the direction of the thinking, 
the one thinks up and the other down. 
Thoughts, however, by no means only con- 
cern the person who thinks them ; seeing 
that thought-transference has been experi- 
mentally demonstrated, there is good ground 
for supposing that our thoughts affect other 
people as well as ourselves. Common ex- 
perience tells us that fear is infectious, that 
if a person is in the grip of terror the on- 
looker will be likely to feel something of a 
sympathetic nameless dread which, if his 
normal poise be not reasonably established, 
may grow into a like terror. One angry 
person is apt to induce anger in another 



94 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

whose self-control is none too strong ; joy, 
good spirits, and affection all are seen in 
daily life to be communicable. Therefore 
it seems not inapt to conclude that thoughts 
and emotions are by no means contained 
within the personality of the individual who 
thinks them, but that rather do they issue 
from him in some subtle way and hence- 
forth become part and parcel of the world's 
great store of thought. This store never 
passes ; each individual thought inscribes 
its permanent record in every heart it 
reaches, thence to issue forth again at the 
appropriate time and secure a wider ex- 
tending record. Each mind, tuned to its 
past thinking, taps the world-wide thought 
to which its sympathy attracts it, like to 
like, sadness to the sad heart, and joyousness 
to the merry one, in an understandable and 
reasonable justice which nobody may im- 
pugn. Thus every thought counts in the 
world's progress, and nothing is lost. But 
it may give us pause when we consider that 
the secret thought and the spoken word 
alike contribute their meed to the world's 
record ; that no thought is strictly our own ; 
and that we can in no wise escape the 
responsibility of assisting the progress of 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 95 

humanity itself by our thoughts, or of re- 
tarding that progress. 

In the waves of the sea there is an im- 
aginary line of the level of the water when 
at rest, and there is also the crest of the wave 
rising above this, and the trough falling 
below it. So in some similar way we may 
imagine a neutral level of thought, with the 
optimist thinking positively above the level, 
and the pessimist thinking negatively below 
it. All that is above helps the world on- 
ward, and all that is below keeps it back ; 
a cheery word is a tonic, but a growl — well, 
there is nothing good that anyone can say 
of it. Anything that leaves the individual 
or the world worse than it was before is 
obviously immoral, no matter whether or no 
it transgresses any known code of ethics ; 
therefore we would say that the pessimist 
is most decidedly a detrimental personage. 
Could he confine the effects of his bad 
thoughts to himself he would still be a 
rather ridiculous figure with his distortions 
and croaking ; but when he must be held 
responsible for infecting others with his 
megrims, and stirring up the potential black- 
ness of minds other than his own, we must 
convict him of a serious offence. 



96 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

Pessimists, too, are apt to enjoy acting as 
spoil-sports ; it is huge consolation to them 
to be able to say " I told you so ! " But if 
we are enlightened enough to insist upon 
compulsory notification and segregation of 
infectious complaints, there seems no logical 
reason why these black-minded folk should 
be at large and able to disseminate their 
poisons wherever their voice can carry or 
their face may show. Thinking the worst 
of everything and everybody, they do much 
to call that worst into being ; seeing faults 
and failings, the effect of their conduct is to 
heighten these and obscure the good. Their 
pernicious influence comes with its trail 
of darkness upon the immature mind, and 
the tragedy of it is that every imprint 
leaves its permanent trace ; it may not 
always do much harm, but in some cases 
its damage at the outsetting of a life may 
be infinite. It may be all very well to be 
tolerant of the pessimist and to make excuses 
for him, but, considered on the matter-of- 
fact basis of the influence of his thoughts, 
his position is indefensible, his very exist- 
ence is almost a crime. He has become 
a pessimist by a very natural process. Just 
as one becomes a philatelist by collecting 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 97 

stamps, so by accumulating unpleasant 
thoughts one grows into a pessimist ; the 
former has a keen eye for stamps, and the 
latter for disagreeable things. There is no 
compulsion about the matter ; it is gener- 
ally admitted that there is good as well as 
bad in the world, and even a pessimist may 
start and collect a few good trifles to add to 
his store of bad ; and few as these may be, 
they will in some measure go to modify his 
hitherto undiluted pessimism. Salvation 
is only a question of time and effort — if he 
desires it. 

Who, then, requires argument to convince 
him that if he can do good instead of evil, 
he should ? We see what we look for, or 
rather the surface that things wear to us is 
the reflection of our own way of thinking ; 
a black mind interprets the world as black, 
but a heart of gold sees the sheen of spirit 
over the commonplace. We are in the world 
to-day, and we can demonstrably uplift it, 
even if ever so little, by the power of high 
and honest thought ; we can in a measure 
assuredly leave it a little better for our 
presence, and the circle of thought that we 
have propagated may be ever-widening in 
its ripples upon the surface, living on in 



98 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

the hearts of those we may never have seen. 
We can in some degree be helpers and 
saviours of our fellows, we can add to the 
sum total of happy thought and cheerful- 
ness, and so make life a little easier for those 
with whom we come in contact. By look- 
ing for the springs of action and the hidden 
causes of events, we develop an element of 
insight and understanding which broadens 
our sympathies, and at the same time 
increases our faith in the inherent goodness 
of things and people. Honest endeavour 
to find out brings a measure of spiritual 
enlightenment which can only confirm and 
strengthen the optimism of our outlook and 
render ridiculous the pessimistic bias which 
sees no good anywhere to-day, and only 
looks for worse to-morrow. 

Mental Poisons 

Practically speaking, all thoughts fall 
either into the helpful class or the harmful — 
the positive or the negative. They are either 
upbuilding and consolidating, or destructive 
and disintegrating. The reason for this we 
may learn from an analysis of our own 
experience, or in a more precise way from 
certain experiments conducted by Professor 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 99 

Elmer Gates. In a general way we realise 
that negative thinking and emotions are 
bad for us, that anger, hatred, jealousy, 
fear, doubt, and worry are detrimental in 
their effects ; we know that under no cir- 
cumstances can they do us any good. But 
we are far from understanding the specific 
ways in which these bad effects are pro- 
duced, and the certainty with which these 
results must be accomplished. Professor 
Gates' experiments showed by analysis of 
the exudations from the sweat glands of 
his subjects, and by other means, that under 
the influence of these various negative 
emotions poisonous secretions were pro- 
duced in the body ; ptomaines, some of 
which were amongst the deadliest known 
to Science. His general conclusions were 
of a very definite nature, and convinced 
him that " irascible, malevolent, and de- 
pressing emotions generate in the system 
injurious compounds, some of which are 
extremely poisonous ; also that agreeable, 
happy emotions generate chemical com- 
pounds of nutritious value, which stimu- 
late the cells to manufacture energy." It 
is additionally interesting to note that he 
considers that the mind is able, by the 



100 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

exercise of will, to produce measurable 
changes of the chemistry of the secretions 
and excretions. 

We can thus see that Nature herself places 
a premium on positive and helpful thinking, 
and exacts a penalty for the reverse. It 
is usual for a man who is angry to direct his 
thoughts outwards to some external object 
and to point his anger, as he might a weapon, 
at its intended victim ; but in so doing he 
ignores its boomerang-like habit of return- 
ing to him that sent it out. If everyone 
were to know that for every exhibition of 
anger they would be compelled to swallow 
a dose of poison, anger would probably to 
a large extent go out of fashion ; yet in 
point of fact this is exactly what happens, 
only the poison is self-generated. We also 
see now that the placid, good-tempered 
person, whom nothing disturbs or dismays, 
is all the time manufacturing nutritious 
compounds which promote health ; possibly 
that is why this type of temperament is 
usually associated with a comfortable 
exterior. We know that the worrier soon 
goes down the hill of health, and it is 
evident that he is succumbing by slow 
degrees to the insidious effects of minute 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 101 

doses of worry-poison ; an overwhelming 
trouble may kill instantly. Doubt, for a 
similar reason, is a disintegrating force ; so 
also are such emotions as nervousness, fear, 
jealousy, impatience, and irritability. 

We have no wish to go through long 
catalogues of negatives, but we do most 
emphatically desire to lay stress upon the 
underlying principle which the effects of all 
these emotions indicate ; and that is the 
utter impossibility of any sane scheme of 
life or religion allowing itself to be associated 
with negatives. A philosophy of life which 
starts out with the assertion that we are con- 
ceived in sin, necessarily and absolutely, is 
a travesty, since it starts the infant damned 
with a negative ; but, Heaven be praised ! 
the mother is positive enough with her 
welcome to the little child as a gift of God. 
A religion based on fear stands self-con- 
demned ; love it is that energises, while fear 
destroys. Man is endowed with gifts above 
all other creatures, it is not his duty to 
stand puling about weakness, unworthiness, 
and sin ; it should be his glory to be about 
his business of realising to the full the 
powers with which he is endowed, and to 
explore the wonderful possibilities that are 



102 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

rightfully his. He was meant to stand 
upright with head erect, and not to bow 
down to false gods or fictitious creeds. His 
mind was given to him for thinking, and 
upon thinking right health follows as surely 
as disease waits upon distorted thought. 
Comes your Puritan to me, or your ascetic, 
with " Brother, see how poor a thing is this 
vile body, how subject to sin and snare ; 
how vain is life" — I have no use for either 
of them ; the creed seems to suit them, 
indeed they advertise it, and in their 
presentment it seems not over-attractive. 
No, poison in blue fluted bottles with red 
labels we can recognise easily enough, and 
avoid ; but this stealthy virus of poor, 
distorted thinking is a danger against which 
we should be doubly on our guard. It is 
everywhere, in our creeds, in our teaching, 
in our thinking ; it is a standardised 
element in the industrial situation to-day. 
Negative thinking is warfare ; when men 
brush aside details and get down to the 
bare principles of life — progress and growth 
— it will be found that our aims are not 
very diverse. But with hatred, animosity, 
selfishness, and mistrust holding the field, 
it is little likely that much progress will be 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 103 

made. The first step is surely to straighten 
out some of the stupid, crooked, negative 
thinking. Why, no man with these in 
his heart can do the work he should ; 
their very presence impairs his physical 
fitness and damps his effort, strive as 
he may. 

We are free to entertain the thoughts 
we invite into the guest-chamber of the 
mind ; it may, indeed it will, need a 
measure of training before the uninvited 
guest learns that he is unwelcome and 
ceases to obtrude. But in course of time 
the poise of the mind can be swayed from 
the negative to the positive, and as the 
mind feeds on strong thoughts it develops 
strength and eschews weakness ; as it dwells 
in love it casts off the lesser emotions of 
hate, jealousy, and mistrust ; as it grows 
in faith it leaves behind its doubt and 
worry. No person with any claims what- 
ever to sanity would poison his body know- 
ingly, and no one who once realises the 
disastrous effects of distorted thought will 
willingly nourish his mind upon these 
negatives, which are so very obviously 
mental poisons. 



104 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

Mental States and Disease 

No doubt most of us have experienced the 
way in which exterior sensation follows on 
thought. We may have been sitting in the 
garden during the evening hours when 
someone mentions gnat-bites ; almost at 
once we feel an irritation on some part of 
the body, and then perhaps it moves some- 
where else, while if we go on talking about 
gnats and bites we begin to feel the horrid 
irritation all over us. But there may have 
been no gnats at all. The interesting point 
is that the mental picture of the irritation 
has a physical counterpart which is quite 
real and active ; there is a correspondence 
between mental and bodily functioning 
which is very illuminating. Herein is an 
unsuspected way again in which our 
thoughts are playing us tricks. 

"The sympathetic system, which is 
largely governed by the mental emotions," 
says Dr A. T. Schofield, " causes functional 
diseases of all parts and many organic 
diseases." If we lead up to this pro- 
nouncement by easy stages it need not 
greatly surprise us, our first step is the recog- 
nition that there is this close interaction 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 105 

between mind and body. In confirmation 
of this we need only consider how mental 
stiffness reacts upon the body ; we think 
perhaps that we are getting too old and 
too stiff to jump on to a car while it is in 
motion, and at once we cease to make the 
effort, we succumb to our thinking and 
forthwith actually are too stiff to do it. If, 
on the other hand, we refuse the suggestion 
of stiffness, and supplant it by one of 
flexibility and activity, we have already 
beaten old age in the first skirmish, delayed 
his plans, and possibly thrown his plan of 
campaign right out of gear. We can then 
jump on to the car just as lithely as we ever 
did. Again, one fine morning we are doing 
our little gymnastic exercises and we try 
to reach the floor with our finger-tips 
without bending the knees, but we find that 
our stretch is an inch or two too short ; 
beware of accepting the fact as a suggestion. 
The thinking needs stretching more than 
the muscles ! If we loosen our mental 
images, and picture ourselves covering that 
extra inch or two with ease, we shall find 
that the muscles will do it. We mentioned 
this point once in a lecture at which an 
elderly gentleman was present ; he ex- 



106 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

pressed his disbelief quite politely but 
forcibly. A fortnight later at the next 
lecture he rose and publicly stated that he 
had satisfied himself that the original 
advice given was correct and that his dis- 
belief was not justified. We thanked him. 

Thinking of a definite part of the body has 
been found to have the effect of altering 
the circulation and sending an increased 
supply of blood there. If a man lying flat 
on a board, which is accurately balanced 
on a knife-edge at the centre, thinks of his 
legs, more blood flows to that region and 
the board swings leg-end down and head- 
end upward. 'If the arm be inserted bare 
into a vessel of water so that the water 
reached full to the top of the vessel without 
overflowing, and if the thoughts are then 
concentrated on the arm, the water will 
overflow ; the veins are to a degree dis- 
tended and displace the water. It is thus 
demonstrated that the alteration in the 
mind thus produces an actual alteration in 
consonance in the body ; if, then, the state 
of a man's mind be permanently altered, 
what else should we expect to find but that 
it produces some permanent change in his 
physical condition ? If his thoughts go 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 107 

wrong, should we not expect his body to 
show some variation from the normal ease ? 
And if this variation from the normal ease be 
pronounced, does it not necessarily amount 
to a degree of dis-ease ? Is it not therefore 
logical to conclude that any type of wrong 
thinking is likely to be associated with an 
appropriate type of disease ? 

We saw in the illustration of the gnats 
that the mental prototype of irritation 
induced an actual surface irritation of the 
skin in various parts of the body ; now 
supposing that something or some circum- 
stance were to produce irritation in the 
mind, would it be very remarkable if this 
were to induce some irritating skin com- 
plaint which would naturally prove as 
intractable as many of the eczemas do ? 
What use would a local application of oint- 
ment be while the mental irritant was still 
in full swing ? We are by no means saying 
that we have as yet arrived at the stage when 
we can assert that certain mental phases 
and physical complaints are inevitably con- 
nected, but we are certainly suggesting 
that the close and intimate connection 
which frequently exists is far too often 
overlooked. Moreover, when we recognise 



108 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

the natural sequence of unhappy events 
which perverted thinking tends to set up, 
we are furnished with one of the most 
potent arguments possible in favour of the 
better way. 

We know a martinet schoolmaster who is 
regarded as a terror by the average boy ; 
he is really a kind-hearted and just man, 
but he has developed a habit of simulating 
violent anger and of barking at his pupils. 
Now it is a curious fact that when we make 
pretence of violent negative emotions it has 
something of the real effect upon ourselves, 
and the usual poisons are circulated in our 
system. The margin between simulation 
and the real thing is perilously small in 
many cases, as the identification of actors 
and actresses with the part they portray 
frequently testifies. So, in the case of our 
schoolmaster friend, the result has shown 
itself in a chronic and distressing dyspepsia 
which no remedy will touch ; he is a martyr 
to his own output of poison. In another 
case we have come across a man who is 
always disagreeing with everyone with whom 
he has to work ; what more natural than 
tha-t this disagreement should extend to 
his food ? He is in fact bilious of mind 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 109 

and bilious of body. Then we all know 
those active, nervous, " jumpy " folk who 
cannot sit still, much less walk slowly ; 
these are the individuals who fluctuate with 
a similar rapidity in their health and whose 
temperature zigzags up and down the chart 
when they have anything the matter with 
them. The emotional folk who let their 
feelings run away with them are liable to 
suffer from palpitation or other heart 
complaints ; their hearts and affections 
are a trifle apt to suffer from over-excita- 
tion, in which there is nothing really 
surprising. 

On the other hand, the sluggish, lethargic 
individual will most likely show that same 
sluggishness in movement, he will not take 
exercise or keep himself fit and therefore 
his circulation will be liable to congestion 
and the workings of his body will mirror 
the same lethargy and sluggishness. If we 
could take him by the scruff of the neck 
and make him take strenuous exercise 
daily, work hard, and eat little, it would 
enable him to think more actively and 
clearly ; but this is only to say that the 
consonance works both ways, from body to 
mind as well as the reverse. The mind, how- 



110 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

ever, is always the most efficacious lever to 
utilise when trying to break any of these 
vicious circles. The backbone-lacking folk 
one so often meets, the people who cling and 
lean, hand over responsibilities and do 
anything except stand up straight and rely 
on their own efforts, these individuals will 
generally rely upon adventitious aids for 
the performance of their natural functions. 
They will generally be found to be suffering 
from some degree of constipation, because 
the dependence-on-pills habit is one that 
is quickly established and slow to be over- 
come. A retentive habit of mind, grudg- 
ing and miserly, may easily turn an acute 
complaint into a chronic from the inability 
to let go ; the retained mental pattern of 
disease may readily stereotype the disease 
in the body. 

So we might go on pointing out these 
more or less obvious consonances, but we 
may just instance how the mother nursing 
the child with whooping-cough occasionally 
develops a similar cough herself from sym- 
pathy, though it is not a genuine case of 
the disease. The choleric person, subject 
to outbursts, not infrequently ends by an 
outburst, the apoplectic breaking of a blood 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 111 

vessel in the brain. The nian-in-a-hurry 
leaves himself no time to do anything 
thoroughly, so we find him suffering from 
imperfect digestion, imperfect elimination, 
and imperfect everything else. The secret- 
ive man or woman, whose one aim is to 
prevent anything coming out, is specially 
liable to suppressed internal trouble ; 
while worry and anxiety are well known 
to predispose to dozens of different dis- 
eases. The ignorant who know nothing 
of the workings of the body will naturally 
pay the penalty of ignorance, the negative 
mental state will be apt to register itself 
in some negation of health. For while the 
savage who knows nothing about the work- 
ings of his body enjoys good health, it is 
because his environment is more or less a 
natural one ; whereas our environment is 
in the highest degree artificial, and know- 
ledge is necessary for us to adjust our lives 
in recognition of the very variable circum- 
stances in which we are placed. We like 
to quote the case of the gouty person who 
is occasionally obstinate, and to propound 
the enigma as to whether he is obstinate 
because he first was gouty, or whether he 
is gouty because he first was obstinate ; but 



112 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

we invariably leave the solution to some- 
one else. 

In leaving this rather interesting topic 
we may just point out that we have been 
tracing the connection between various 
phases of negative thought and disease ; 
of positive thinking we have specifically 
said little, but by implication much. The 
great positive force in the world is love. 
Love is life-giving and energising, and it 
promotes health and ease ; the blackness 
of disease is only the absence of the light of 
health. We have been discoursing on the 
subject of disease only in the guise of 
friendly warning ; the whole trend of this 
chapter is specially to emphasise our poten- 
tial immunity to disease through the agency 
of right thinking. For, as a medical man 
has placed on record, " Selfishness is . . . 
directly or indirectly the cause of almost all 
diseases, both acute and chronic, and love 
and unselfishness are the great cure for 
sin and disease." 

Resisting-Power 

Health is the normal, and disease the 
abnormal ; this is a fact which is constantly 
being overlooked. We grow so accustomed 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 113 

to seeing health punctuated at intervals by 
spells of illness that in time the see-saw state 
between being ill and being well becomes so 
familiar to us that we regard anything else 
as unusual. Many people after a spell of 
entirely irrational living find themselves 
hors de combat, they then resort to their 
medical man to be patched up, or they under- 
go a cure somewhere or other. As soon as 
they feel fairly fit once more they start again 
on the old irrational habits of over-eating 
and under-eliminating, and thus they are 
no sooner freed from one breakdown than 
they issue invitation to another, and in due 
course it comes. This, however, is merely 
making a mock of health ; such folk as 
these have only a switchback of disease 
instead of a steady level of health. Others 
alternate between food and physic, and 
think that being out of the doctor's hands 
and free from the necessity of medicine is 
equivalent to being well. While we are 
generally content to minimise the disgrace 
of disease and put up with a tenth-rate 
standard of health, we shall probably achieve 
just about as much as we deserve ; but the 
millennium is still a long way off. 

In a state of health the bodily functions 



114 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

are carried on in a perfect manner, and with 
ease ; ill-health is the interruption of this, 
and instead of ease — friction. The normal 
condition is one of harmony, and natural 
resistance to every form of disease ; when 
the standard of health is reduced this re- 
sistance is correspondingly impaired. The 
person who succumbs to an illness proves 
by the very fact that his resistance was not 
sufficiently strong ; but we may believe 
that the absolutely healthy person (if he 
exists at all) would be immune to disease, 
since such disease is after all but the im- 
pairment of the normal health. Therefore, 
those people who cannot " understand why 
they caught the disease, because they were 
so absolutely healthy," show by the facts 
of the case that they were not as healthy 
as they thought they were. We may in- 
cline to the idea that all illness is the fault 
of the insidious germ, but both in health 
and disease germs, like the poor, are always 
with us. Neither are all germs detrimental. 
If our illness were solely to be laid to the 
count of the germs we come across, then all 
should fare alike ; but experience condemns 
this as a fallacy. Two people drink of the 
same tainted water, but perhaps only one 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 115 

contracts typhoid ; why should this be ? 
The conditions are the same in each case 
with regard to the germ, but the variable 
factor is the resisting power of the individual 
— one is below par and succumbs, the other 
is in good health and goes scot free. Some 
children go through their school life and 
never contract any illness, others get every- 
thing that is going ; it is most emphatically 
to the personal element that we must devote 
attention. 

It is interesting to note the precautions 
that Nature takes to guard us against ill- 
health ; the saliva, for instance, is anti- 
septic. Thus, when adequately mixed 
during the process of mastication with the 
food we swallow, it is of great use in pre- 
venting any toxic products of fermentation. 
No doubt it is also of distinct use in the 
case we have previously referred to when the 
baby endeavours to use coal and other 
doubtful things as articles of diet. If by 
any chance poison gets into the body there 
is a sort of National Guard of protective 
microbes in the blood, termed Phagocytes, 
whose sole duty is to deal with such in- 
truders ; they resist the invasion and 
generally succeed in wiping out the in- 



116 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

vaders. Then there is also the White Guard, 
known as Leucocytes, who pack up round 
the seat of any poisonous injury and so 
localise it ; we say the injury " festers," 
but the festering is an item in the process 
of cure and is a testimony to the valiance 
of our white defenders. Any deleterious 
matter that is in the system can find its 
way out by various exits, through the 
intestines, the lungs, the kidneys, or the 
skin, so that in the ordinary way there is 
little excuse for any poison remaining. It 
is remarkable to note the way in which 
strong emotion can produce an almost 
instantaneous change in the breath of an 
individual, and where the breath before was 
sweet and fragrant the rush of emotion 
gives it an immediate and perceptible taint. 
Wrong thinking will also tinge the odour of 
the perspiration quite noticeably. But the 
whole machinery of our bodies is so complex 
and wonderful that it is a thousand pities 
we second Nature so very badly in her 
efforts to keep us well. 

The crux of the matter, then, is not that 
poisonous germs obtain access to our bodies, 
but that by our ignorance or neglect we 
provide such a happy hunting-ground for 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 117 

them. A harmful germ stands but a poor 
chance in a healthy body, but it simply 
revels in a suitable environment ; it multi- 
plies with an ease and rapidity that might 
leave even a green fly envious. Then comes 
the battle royal between Cavaliers and 
Roundheads, National Guard versus In- 
vaders, Toxins versus Antitoxins ; we are ill, 
and we recover when the invader is finally 
overcome. It is the merest folly, then, 
to do anything that lowers the body tone ; 
it is issuing an open invitation to trouble, 
and such invitations are frequently accepted. 
Insanitary conditions, lack of fresh air, 
insufficient or bad food, personal unclean- 
ness — especially internal, — deprivation of 
sleep, overwork, worry, wrong thinking — 
all these promote the very state it should 
be our aim to avoid. Work, for example, 
is a good thing, but it is possible to have too 
much of it ; especially if the work be 
accompanied by mental strain or friction 
of any sort. But, as a rule, very few 
succumb to work alone, that is, to the effect 
of sheer physical exhaustion ; a certain 
amount of fatigue after the day's effort is 
natural enough. But it is the mental effort 
that more or less accompanies work of every 



118 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

description which is the true cause of over- 
work ; it is the anxiety to get the letters off 
in time for post that proves exacting, rather 
than the actual dictating or writing. It is 
the worry as to the issue of the business that 
tells more than the technical labour in- 
volved. To leave off work at 10 p.m. after 
a heavy day is no very dreadful thing, and 
if we have been keenly interested in the 
work we may even then feel inclined to 
stay longer and finish ; but those hours 
prove disastrous when accompanied by 
suppressed irritation because the work was 
not over at six o'clock. 

The elimination of friction from the 
mental workings is therefore the removal 
of one potent cause of lowered resistance ; 
strong, cheerful thinking tends of itself to 
keep the resistance high. It is not enough 
to avoid the negative, we should practise 
the positive. The problem of disease largely 
centres itself upon the question of health, 
and we hold a perverted view in considering 
disease as a specific entity whose attacks 
we must be ever ready to repel. It should 
more properly be regarded as a falling away 
from the rightful and normal health. We 
might even adopt a numerical scale and 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 119 

assess the truly healthful person at 10, if 
the body tone be reduced to 9, then the 
disease scale automatically stands at 1 ; 
health 7 points means disease 3 points. 
But perhaps it is not till we reach 5 points 
of disease that we really recognise ourselves 
as being ill, yet there have been distinct 
degrees of ill-health long before the actual 
breakdown occurs. When disease reaches 
the 10-point mark the undertaker's business 
commences. But most of us oscillate be- 
tween the 5- and 7-point marks of health ; 
it should be our most earnest endeavour 
by every means, and chiefly through the 
wonder-working power of directed thought, 
to raise the standard of health to the 
10-point mark, and when it stands there 
it testifies to perfect health and complete 
immunity to disease. 

" Vis Medicatrix Natures" 

We should hardly be able to find to-day 
an enlightened medical man who would 
assert that he himself had cured a patient 
of a disease, or even that the drugs he had 
prescribed had done so. It is becoming 
more and more generally recognised that 
the healing force is within us already, and 



120 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

that its subtle power begins to assert itself 
as soon as ever the disturbing conditions 
which promoted the indisposition are re- 
moved. Symptoms the physician can, and 
does, alleviate ; and by the reduction or 
control of these the patient is relieved, 
but Nature works the cure. Yet although 
it may be quite correct to say that the doctor 
does not actually work the cure, neverthe- 
less our frequent experience leads us to say 
that somehow we feel better or more re- 
assured after seeing him ; this, however, is 
only because more elusive elements than 
physic and prescriptions are concerned. 
The activity of suggestion in some one or 
other of its manifold forms cannot be 
ignored. We go to see our medical man in 
whom we have implicit confidence, and his 
sympathetic diagnosis and assurance of 
complete cure perhaps removes the fear or 
the anxiety which was such a prominent 
factor in causing the trouble ; therefore 
we come away from his consulting-room 
certainly better, and possibly cured. 
But did the doctor effect the cure ? 
Yes, and No. As a dealer in drugs 
and potions, No. As a prime mover in 
checking wrong conditions and enabling 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 121 

the healing force to do its rightful 
work, Yes. 

We might even look a little further into 
the matter and recognise that not only has 
the doctor himself by his manner, word, 
and actions set this subtle suggestion at 
work, but even the very drugs he prescribes 
are full of suggestion, and doubly so when 
swallowed with a large measure of faith. 
Certain drugs acquire the reputation of 
producing specific results, and therefore 
anyone taking them expects, and conse- 
quently predisposes himself to the pro- 
duction of, those results ; that is to say, 
the effect is already half achieved before 
the drug has been swallowed. Thus we are 
able in a measure to understand those 
puzzling cases where innocuous draughts 
taken under the impression that they were 
emetics have resulted in genuine sickness, 
where astringent medicines have been ad- 
ministered to patients who thought them 
laxatives and the effect has been that 
of an aperient, and where bread pills have 
produced marvellous cures of a hundred 
and one diseases. If there were no sugges- 
tive element about the drug, how should 
it come about that a tasteless medicine in 



122 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

many cases seems to the patient to produce 
far less result than a truly nasty one ? It 
is also very curious to note that the effect 
of poisons is not the same in the hypnotic 
as in the normal state. We should probably 
not be far wrong in supposing that while 
drugs have a certain effect upon the in- 
dividual simply as drugs, yet there is also 
a secondary effect owing to the suggestive 
influence of the person who prescribes them, 
and of their acquired reputation. 

There is yet another point that crops 
up in this connection ; it is plausibly sug- 
gested that as a man is not his body — 
being a kind of life-influence which is absent 
fron the dead body — so also there is a 
tenuous element which constitutes the 
" life " of the food we eat, the liquids we 
imbibe, and the physic we inflict upon our- 
selves. This element is of varying degrees 
of refinement, as is equally so the case with 
the chemicals themselves. The various 
chemical constituents of the earth exist in 
too crude a form to be of direct use to the 
human body, but they are assimilated by 
the plant and vegetable and raised to that 
degree of refinement when they can be 
utilised in the internal economy of animals 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 123 

or mankind. So there are crude drugs 
which produce distressing effects upon the 
average individual, and refined tinctures 
which can exercise an elevating and benefi- 
cent influence. Similarly, there are smells 
which can knock one down, and odours 
which stimulate fantasy and breathe of 
ecstasy. 

We do well to lay emphasis upon the 
inner side of things and to stress the spiritual 
element, for the ultimate source of our 
health is spirit rather than matter. We 
aim not at a mere mechanical perfection 
of body — so much fuel, so much oil, so many 
units of horse-power — but rather at that 
refinement of physique which shall render 
brother body the fitting helpmeet and 
servant of the spirit that animates it. The 
nervous system is the link twixt matter 
and spirit ; the matter of the body is too 
crude to be manipulated direct by the fine 
forces of spirit, so the human brain and 
nerves interpose, and, at the lower end 
controlling the muscular system, make 
connection at the other with the delicate 
spiritual element. We are thus, as it were, 
linked on to the immense resources of the 
infinite which work for health of body and 



124 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

growth of mind ; if the scientist to-day can 
assert that there are many tons of energy 
locked up in the atom, who is to put any 
limit to the power of the immensities of 
spirit ? But we are dependent upon our 
receiving instrument for the realisation of 
this power ; ill-health marks an impairment 
of this instrument, and by its reflex action 
on the nervous system renders the working 
of this power the more difficult. The 
channel for the manifestation of the Vis 
Medicatrix, the life-force, becomes blocked, 
and thus it is that there are times when 
some external aid becomes a necessity that 
the channel may be reopened. But the 
force is within us, it is not supplied from any 
outside source, not from food or physic ; 
it is within us by virtue of the fact that we 
are spirit in essence. In sleep, when more 
than at any other time the purely physical 
bonds are loosened, we gain the greatest 
restoration of the spiritual energy of health. 
With every removal or alleviation of cir- 
cumstances or conditions that work against 
the free flow of spirit, our health is to a 
corresponding degree restored. 

The healing power is Nature ; so long as 
life exists there is a gyroscopic pull in the 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 125 

direction of health. While health exists 
that " pull " is directed toward the main- 
tenance of the true form of health, in 
illness it works for its restoration. But, 
as a matter of fact, our lives are rilled with 
such obvious and unreasonable departures 
from rational living that it is little wonder 
we so often fall into the pit of ill-health. 
Our bodies are used in a way which might 
make any mechanic tear his hair to see 
machinery so scandalously treated ; we fre- 
quently think in such fashion as to make 
the continuance of health scarcely less than 
a miracle ; we starve our spirits and expect 
the body to carry on as if that mattered 
not at all ; we overwork and underfeed, 
or underwork and overfeed, according to 
our temperament and intelligence. Kind 
Nature makes the widest allowances for 
our errors, but there are limits beyond which 
even her indulgent providence cannot go. 
Yet her rebellion is solely directed against 
the wrong conditions, and so soon as ever 
we repent of our foolishness she forgives, 
strives to forget, and simply sets out to 
restore our rightful meed of health. There 
is so much that we may do to help her and 
to help ourselves, and not the least of these 



126 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

things is for us to recognise the existence of 
that vast reservoir of health and strength 
to which we are linked, and upon which we 
may draw with certainty so soon as obstruc- 
tive conditions are finally removed. 

Health and Holiness 

At first sight it might appear as if there 
were little real connection between health 
and holiness ; they may indeed be thought 
to be things apart, but they are not so. 
As to the actual words themselves, their 
common origin is the Anglo-Saxon root 
Hal, meaning whole. To be whole is some- 
thing more than merely to be well, to be 
free from pain, or to have no specific dis- 
ease ; it comprises perfect working of both 
body and mind. It is interesting to note 
the way in which, in the narration of the 
Bible miracles, Christ is continually re- 
ported to have talked of being " whole " 
rather than well ; furthermore, to the 
student of the mental side of things the 
significance of the phrase " thy faith hath 
made thee whole " will not be lost. The 
faith which was part of the mental equip- 
ment of the sufferer was pointed out as 
an integral element in the cure, on the 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 127 

authority of Christ Himself. Where this 
faith was noticeably lacking, and in its place 
there was a marked strain of incredulity, 
we are told that He was unable to accom- 
plish mighty works there because "of their 
unbelief " ; in other words, the faith element 
was of such paramount importance that 
without it miracles became impossible even 
to Christ. The student of hypnosis will 
here note the very close parallel which 
exists between these narrated events of a 
far-off day and modern experimental re- 
search. If a person has active disbelief 
in the power of the operator to hypnotise 
him, it is practically impossible for him to 
do so ; faith is an essential element, and in 
proportion as the faith is strong or weak, 
so does the operator's task become easy, 
or difficult even to impossibility. 

But it is scarcely necessary to draw the 
parallel outside the limits of the familiar ; 
it is difficult for a man to be a successful 
teacher unless there already exists a measure 
of faith in the minds of his hearers as to his 
teaching. How hard it is to get up and 
face a hostile audience ! The thoughts 
freeze and the eloquence is damped, except 
in the case of those forceful individuals who 



128 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

thrive on opposition ; the lack of faith 
only too often prevents mighty orations. 
The atmospheres that are generated by the 
thoughts of individuals are very real things ; 
suspicion chills, and hate destroys ; resent- 
ment freezes, and love energises. It needs 
therefore but little imagination to enable 
us to picture in connection with the healing 
miracles of the Christ the chilling effect of 
polite scepticism or pointed ridicule upon 
a generous, sensitive, all-loving nature. 
The double loss entailed by the faithless- 
ness, which prevents alike the giving and 
the receiving, is clear to us. Thus quite 
obviously the mental attitude of the indi- 
vidual has much to do with the benefits or 
ills that accrue to him ; and of the in- 
fluences which go to the determining of this 
mental attitude, a man's religious ideas are 
among the most important. 

Religions, broadly speaking, fall either 
into a category where a man says " I know " 
or "I believe," or else confesses " I do not 
know " or "I do not believe." The one is 
an affirmation and the other a negation ; 
and affirmation as certainly possesses a 
propulsive force as negation has a retarding 
effect. Progress may indeed be on wrong 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 129 

lines, but inertia in matters of religious 
conviction can never be right. We have 
seen the effect in general of negative think- 
ing, and this is by no means confined to 
secular things ; if a man's creed be negative 
it seems to result in a species of creeping 
paralysis over his general activities. He 
has lost his objective and is "up in the 
air." We may be right or wrong, but at 
any rate we seem to have noticed that, 
where a great religion has absolved its 
adherents from the necessity of personal 
questioning and the responsibility of indi- 
vidual judgment, there follows a corre- 
sponding " damping down " of the will to 
shoulder responsibility and to trust to 
private judgment in mundane matters, 
together with a too ready acceptance of 
dogmatic authority in spheres where the 
individual might, and should, find out for 
himself. Theoretically this is what we 
should expect ; practically, we believe it 
may be observed. The underlying prin- 
ciple is of great significance, for if a man 
believes that sickness, for instance, is sent 
to him by God he will be likely to accept 
it, when very possibly it might be more to 

the point to send for the plumber and get 

9 



130 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

him to look at the drains. We have even 
heard a parson apologise for having a 
family, large beyond the bounds of reason 
and the depth of his pocket, by saying that 
the Lord sends children. True, quite true ; 
but the reverend gentleman disregarded a 
biological factor which should have been 
under his own control. 

Fear is an arch-enemy of mankind, and if 
the straight path is to be followed merely 
because there is a bonfire at the end of the 
crooked, then life resolves itself into a sort 
of wild endeavour to steer clear of the notice 
boards exhorting us to avoid this and to 
avoid that, and to keep off the grass al- 
together. With fear over-shadowing it, the 
day becomes a kind of non-stop obstacle 
race with punishments for those who do not 
win. But, thank heaven, we are emanci- 
pating ourselves from these archaic and 
negative doctrines, which must of necessity 
register their effects upon the health of 
those who subscribe to them ; we refuse to 
have our peace of mind and health of body 
sapped by such misconceived ideas. Sunday 
is not an aristocrat among the other days 
of the week, the laws of life are not cloth- 
bound for one day and paper-backed for 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 131 

the remaining six. We have no sym- 
pathies for the man who professes to love 
his neighbour at church and pays his work 
girls starvation wages at his factory ; nor 
for the lady who avows herself a disciple of 
the King of Love, when ecclesiastically 
minded, and flies into tantrums of rage when 
she runs up against anything that dis- 
pleases her ; nor yet for the man who prates 
of Brotherhood at the P.S.A. and smashes 
up a non-unionist who wants to work. It 
may seem far-fetched to say that any of 
these things have anything to do with 
health, but they are one and all sectional 
views of life, out of perspective, distorted, 
and therefore by the very fact opposed to 
" wholeness " and true health. 

On the other hand, a positive creed 
recognises a fundamental unity in affairs, 
seeing the ability of the spiritual view to 
co-ordinate ends apparently diverse. We 
are spirits now, and briefly the measure 
of our spirituality exists in our character, 
and the law of our spirituality is Love. 
There is only one real beautifier and 
energiser in the world, and that is Love ; 
not the puny, limiting conception of the 
word that would confine and restrict it to 



132 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

the merely sexual aspect, but the wider 
view that sees Love as the fount of all 
positive affection, feelings, and aspirations. 
This is the force that strives to express itself 
in all Art, that itself paints the thoughts 
beautiful, glorifies the health, and brings 
the bloom to the cheek. Chemists sell face 
powders and rouge, but beauty cannot be 
plastered on like distemper or floor-polish. 
Health in itself is beauty, and Love with 
all its train of energising emotions, which 
promote the secretions and the life-giving 
forces, is the one source of health. 

Therefore away with negative creeds that 
would turn our thoughts upon our faults, 
failures, and the sundry skeletons in the 
evolutionary cupboard, and welcome to the 
Love that points man upward and onward 
to his Godward destiny ; a thousand times 
better this than to wallow in history and 
give it renewed life and power over us in 
our thoughts. It would be just as reason- 
able to bid the lily fix its thoughts upon 
the dung in which its roots lie buried, but 
the lily is wiser than our educated selves, 
and silently and unconcernedly it turns 
its endeavours upwards to the flower that 
is to be ; it prefers destiny to history. 



THOUGHT AND HEALTH 133 

The principle of life is one : Love. The 
principle of health is one : Love. Every 
minute of the day supplies us with a 
thousand details, and many there be who 
cannot see the wood of life for the indi- 
vidual trees. Monday's problems may bear 
no resemblance to those of Tuesday, but 
principles are the same all the week long. 
Love denied may make one poor, another 
sick, a third jealous, a fourth bitter, and 
another cold ; yet for all the poverty, 
sickness, jealousy, bitterness, and coldness 
there is but one remedy, and that — more 
Love. 



CHAPTER III 

THOUGHT AND WEALTH 

What is Business? 

Beyond any question the word " business " 
suggests in many minds something akin to 
the distasteful, something that reeks of the 
sordid and pertains solely to the shop and 
to the counter. We are most of us more 
than a trifle prejudiced against it, and 
mainly because we have narrowed its mean- 
ing down in a fashion quite unnecessary, 
and having made the word a synonym for 
money-grubbing we forthwith proceed to 
turn up our solemn and strictly professional 
noses at it, and pass it by on the other side. 
Most of us ; but those of an analytical turn 
of mind see deeper beneath the surface of 
the transactions that go by the name of 
business, and note that they are but the 
specialised phases of the general dealing 
of man with man. In other words, when 
we rightly appreciate what business really 

134 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 135 

means we find that, though differing in 
detail, its principles are universal. 

If we take for illustration the most 
commonplace action of buying at a shop, 
we see that the essential parties are the 
buyer and the seller, and that these two 
meet together over the article of purchase ; 
two people coming together over some 
mutual topic thus constitute the funda- 
mentals of business. Now very possibly our 
commercially-minded friend may quarrel 
with so simple a definition which makes 
no mention of pounds, shillings, and pence, 
but surely when some remote ancestor 
of ours purchased a wife in exchange 
for a suitable number of oxen, that too 
was business ; and when Esau sold his 
birthright for a mess of pottage, that also 
was a more or less legitimate, even if one- 
sided, business transaction. But if we take 
this simple standard whereby to measure 
business we do indeed find that business 
is universal, and that the monetary transac- 
tion stands but for a particular type. 

It may shock the professional mind thus 
to regard all our usual activities as so much 
business, but when our inoffensive selves 
meet the dentist upon the topic of an 



136 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

aching tooth what else may we term it ? 
Is it pleasure ? Can it be luxury ? Or 
may we look upon it as an incident in the 
gaiety of nations in general and of indi- 
viduals in particular ? Do we not rather 
regard it in the light of a distinctly un- 
pleasant business, and one to be disposed 
of most thankfully ? Again, suppose we 
go to church, then the parson in his pulpit 
and our noble selves in the pew are met 
upon the subject of religious teaching ; or 
if in the middle of the night we send for 
the long-suffering doctor that we may dis- 
cuss with him upon the point of the dis- 
tressing symptoms we inwardly manifest ; 
are not these so much business, professional 
in character though the activities may be ? 
Even the lady of the house discussing with 
the visitor the moot point of tea or coffee 
for breakfast is fulfilling the conditions of 
business ; so too the swain upon his bony 
knees conferring with the beloved on the 
thorny problem of matrimonial venture. 
Thus do sentiment and matters both sacred 
and profane, remote and commonplace 
alike, come within the net of our definition. 

Furthermore, that we may scandalise the 
soul that shrinks from things commercial, 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 137 

let us emphasise the fact that each of us has 
something to sell. The parson sells his lore 
and learning, his elocutionary skill — if so 
be he has any, — his kindly district- visiting 
sympathies, his organising ability in the 
parish, and so on ; these correspond to the 
goods which he hands over in return for 
his stipend. The doctor sells his know- 
ledge, the fruits of his education, his bed- 
side manner, the suggestion he manages to 
implant within the mind, and possibly the 
physic ; these he gives you at your call, 
and goes away scorning even to mention 
money. But in due course his little account, 
so disdainful of sordid details, reaches you ; 
and presently you complete the business by 
a duly deferred payment. The specialist is 
not quite so artistic over the matter, and the 
financial element is possibly a trifle more 
conspicuous. The baser sort of dentist 
jettisons the professional polish altogether 
and flatly advertises " Extractions, Is." 
But even the languishing maid upon 
whose yea or nay the fond youth deems 
all his hopes of ecstasy and high heaven to 
hang, she too has something to sell ; she 
executes a mortgage upon her future for 
a circlet of gold, she gives a debenture 



138 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

upon her very existence and receives as 
consideration the right to cook and sew 
and skimp for the rest of her life for a man 
who will be the exception if he thanks her 
for it. Possibly she may sell herself with- 
out any consideration whatever save to 
proclaim him lord of love who is in truth 
but slave of passion ; but clearly the woman 
has something to sell, bad bargain though 
she may make of it. 

The poet has for ware his sensitiveness 
and his vision, though the philistine flouts 
these virtues ; the author has for exchange 
the hot fire of his enthusiasm, the record of 
his struggles, or the dexterity of his verbal 
juggling ; the musician has his voiceless 
speech of song, or the froth of his pot- 
boilers. Some of these, it is true, are very 
unmarketable commodities, sometimes the 
world even takes the goods and defers the 
payments until the angel of death runs a 
pencil through the account, or perhaps 
posterity squares it by putting up a statue. 
But the fact remains that everyone has 
something to sell, and is even dependent 
upon selling it for mere bread and butter. 
Time, skill, experience, brain-power, muscle, 
the gift of song, eloquence, or imagination 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 139 

— these are the articles of the world's com- 
merce, for which society pays in cash or 
kind. 

Then, if all the world is in business and 
most things are for sale, the point is this : 
that there are laws of business to which all 
these transactions must conform. If we 
can square these varied activities in with 
general principles, and associate these prin- 
ciples themselves with other principles, co- 
ordinating the whole into one comprehensive 
endeavour, we shall have done something 
of distinct value. Much of the trouble of 
life comes from the crazy patchwork view 
we take of it, lacking continuity and 
coherence, and therefore we lose grip of 
first principles. Like the phalanx of old, 
everything depends upon the point, and if 
a life has no point it is fairly certain to fritter 
itself away in useless endeavour. Show 
purpose and point, show the string of con- 
tinuity on which the happenings of every- 
day are hung, and life gains the added 
interest of a game we can understand at 
any rate in part. Thus the recognition of 
the way in which the manifold transactions 
of life are based on broad general prin- 
ciples, and possess as distinct a purpose 



140 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

as when we go to the ironmonger to pur- 
chase two-pennyworth of tacks, is the first 
step towards understanding the relation of 
thought to wealth. 

" He that is Greatest " 

It is a common fallacy to confuse busi- 
ness with money-making. It is an equally 
prevalent error to assume that the primary 
object of existence is to make a living. 
Both these views are erroneous owing to an 
insufficiently wide comprehension of the 
facts of the case. Seeing that there are 
invariably two parties to any transaction, 
and that as a general rule only one of them 
is likely to be getting money out of it, 
obviously there is more than money in it. 
To consider for one moment the instance 
we mentioned of the visit to the dentist ; 
the pother is all about the tooth, but when 
the testy thing is once out the dentist has 
no manner of use for it, and we certainly 
do not want to see it again. But the 
dentist does me the service of ridding me 
of the offensive molar, and in my gratitude 
I translate my thanks into the acceptable 
language of finance. So we both prosper 
and go on our way rejoicing. He has 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 141 

served me, and I serve him, each of us 
according to our several abilities. If the 
dentist had successfully extracted the fee 
from my pocket and had left the tooth in 
my head, it would have been truly bad 
business and no bargain at all — for me. 
The basic element in the transaction is 
service, each for the other, to the mutual 
advantage ; the money is only useful as a 
sort of common denominator to which 
we reduce general values in order to deal 
with them conveniently. It would clearly 
be somewhat inconvenient for the farmer 
who wished to purchase a piano to carry 
around with him a selection of hayricks in 
order to strike a bargain with the man with 
half a dozen baby-grands in his luggage ; 
therefore we reduce the hayricks and the 
pianos to the common basis of cash, and 
arrange things accordingly. 

All real business can thus be analysed 
down to its root of mutual service, and 
where this does not exist we are compelled 
to classify it as something else. If a man 
sells me worthless goods in return for my 
valid service of supplying him with money, 
he may indeed call it good business, but 
the law would brand it as fraud. The legal 



142 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

document begins, " In consideration of — ," 
and the consideration is the service rendered 
— the very fundamental of the bargain. It 
would be a poor look out for the patient 
if the doctor were but to consider the 
money element in his diagnosis instead of 
the complaint, or if he were to supply 
medicines appropriate to the pocket rather 
than the disease. We know, however, that 
the doctor's ideal is the professional service 
he can render to the sufferer, and on the 
business side he renders his account " For 
professional services," putting thus in so 
many words the gist of the argument we 
are endeavouring to make plain. But yet 
again, if the patient refuses to pay the 
doctor's fees after he has had the benefit of 
his advice, the bargain breaks down upon 
the patient's side ; the patient denies his 
service of cash in return. Bad business 
this — for the doctor. If the teacher takes 
the fee and does not teach, if the singer 
first sings for a fee and then has to whistle 
for it, if the grocer sells bad eggs to the 
confiding customer, or the financial shark 
sells shares in a diamond mining company 
located in the fertile fields of his imagina- 
tion, these are no business transactions, the 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 143 

facts deny service and so rule them out 
of court. 

Let us be tolerably clear, then, that the 
essence of business is service, and, further, 
that it must be mutual. Recognising this, 
we may then begin to notice how frequently 
we use the word in our everyday language, 
how we depend upon the service of the 
domestic for the shaving water, how break- 
fast is served, how the postal service brings 
us our letters, and the bus or train service 
takes us to town, how the telephone or 
telegraph service play their part in our 
business, and so on. All day long something 
or other is contributing to us its meed of 
service, and the better the service the easier 
it is for us, and the worse the service the 
louder our complaints. Go into a shop 
where they serve you badly, and you come 
out vowing you will never enter the shop 
again, nor do you — provided you can get 
someone else to serve you better. But think 
what that means to the shopkeeper ; it is 
not merely your custom that he loses, he did 
not merely serve you as an individual badly, 
but you as a class ; thus, as he gradually 
alienates his customers he gravitates surely 
and certainly to extinction by the bank- 



144 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

ruptcy court. This is Nature's verdict upon 
the denial of service. The doctor who fails 
to benefit his patients, or the lecturer who 
cannot hold his audience, these are in the 
same case as the tradesman who sells un- 
satisfactory goods ; while, broadly speak- 
ing, the better the service one can render 
the greater the opportunities of business. 
Thus we arrive at the conclusion that the 
greatness of a business must be dependent 
upon the service it offers — an axiom already 
propounded centuries since in the form, 
" He that is greatest among you, let him 
be your servant." If this could be dinned 
into the heart of the nation, not as a religious 
phrase but as an incomparable item of 
golden common sense, it would be worth 
a thousand times over all the political 
catch-phrases ever invented. Business is 
mutual service ; greatness is service. Denial 
of service in the long run (and naturally 
having longer legs or longer purses some 
people run further than others before fate 
trips them up) spells ignominy, suicide, and 
extinction ; and this indeed is no creed to 
embrace of sober judgment. 

Yet another point to be noted is that in 
our selling, whatever our wares may be, 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 145 

it is not these alone that we transfer, but 
there is also the manner of their trans- 
ference that enters into the account. A 
restaurant may have first-class food, but 
they may throw it at you, so to speak ; 
the goods are right, but we take care to go 
where the service is better. An author 
may write solid material and the publisher 
have it set up in such small type that the 
reader puts it down in favour of a book in 
larger type ; the way in which it is served 
up damns it. A lecturer can make the 
ablest subject totally uninteresting by a 
faulty delivery which spoils his discourse. 
On the other hand, even a penny postage 
stamp accompanied by a pleasing smile is 
such a good bargain that, when we find the 
postal clerk who sells her wares thus, we 
shall promise never to buy our stamps 
anywhere else for ever and ever — or, at 
any rate, so long as the smiles last. But 
ladies who give such efficient service as 
this are generally invited very soon to 
exchange the postal service for the matri- 
monial, for the bachelor cannot but realise 
that the morning coffee served with smiles 
fortifies one for a day's work much better 

than when taken black. The physic plus 

10 



146 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

bedside manner is truly far more efficacious 
than the unsympathetic pill. All the way 
round, then, we may observe that it is not 
merely the goods we sell that come into the 
bargain, but that the etceteras are of great 
moment ; and everywhere in personal 
meeting cheerfulness is an aid to good 
business. 

Faith as a Basis of Permanence 

Faith is one of those pillars of our daily 
existence which, owing to their permanence 
and proximity, we fail to notice ; even as 
we may suppose that the fish knows nothing 
of the element in which he moves and has 
his being. This faith is an actual ingredient 
of our mental make-up. Nightly we lie 
down to sleep in the faith that we shall 
awaken the next morning, taking for granted 
that there will be a next morning, and assum- 
ing also that it will come at the regular and 
usual time. It would indeed be difficult to 
conceive of a state of affairs when to-morrow 
might be expected at totally irregular 
intervals, and, at any rate, it would make 
things a trifle unstable and somewhat com- 
plex. However, the regularity of Nature's 
ordinances has been such in our own ex- 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 147 

perience and in the recorded experience of 
mankind that we accept it as a fact, and 
in faith we base the order of our affairs 
upon its continuance. Lacking this faith 
we would certainly need to regard life very 
differently. 

Furthermore, even as this confidence in 
the order of Nature is elemental in our lives, 
so also is belief in our fellow-men a necessary 
part of our equipment. Our relations with 
other men are tacitly based upon the 
assumption that they are honest and, in 
general, well-intentioned towards us. We 
buy goods in the belief that we shall get 
what we pay for, we tender a note and quite 
naturally wait for the change ; even these 
elementary business transactions would be- 
come impossible in the absence of a degree 
of faith in the shopkeeper and cashier. We 
exercise a pleasing confidence in the label, 
and we do not even ask whether the train 
placarded for the North travels southward ; 
we jump on the car that advertises its 
destination in the sweet and simple ex- 
pectation that it goes in that direction. 
It would certainly add a chromatic and even 
savage liveliness to travel if faith were 
misplaced and vehicles of all kinds were 



148 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

errant and eccentric in fantastic locomotion. 
Thus it appears that faith in these funda- 
mental ways is so much a part of our daily 
existence that we mark it not, and take it, 
in the most cavalier fashion, for granted. 

In all our mutual transactions of everyday 
there must exist this element of faith to 
facilitate the exchange of service. The 
parson in his pulpit may preach ever so 
eloquently, but if we have no belief in his 
teaching his words, for us, are barren of 
result. If we deem the doctor a fool, 
his prescription is little likely to prove 
efficacious and promote our health, we do 
better to consult a physician in whom we 
trust. We consult the solicitor in touching 
faith that his opinion is worth the six-and- 
eightpences at which he debits it to us, 
and he in turn pins his faith (at our expense) 
on Counsel's opinion, and so there are little 
faiths, bigger faiths, and some quite enor- 
mous faiths that never come my way or yours 
because we are not rich enough to pay for 
them. Big fees seem to promote the larger 
trustfulness, and we probably enjoy the 
play better at half-a-crown for the pit than 
a shilling for the gallery, and in either case 
we are more ready to be interested and 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 149 

amused than if the tickets are given away. 
We have a three-and-sixpenny faith in the 
general practitioner and a three-guinea one 
in the specialist, and it tells in the result. 
You may not believe a word I write, and 
this is my loss, no doubt ; but it certainly 
puts an end to our little business together, 
for without a modicum of faith we have no 
common ground for intercourse and must 
each go our separate ways. Yet if only 
you can say that " here and there this fellow 
seems to talk sense," then we have some 
common platform upon which we may take 
our stand. There is a tiny bridge of faith 
betwixt us over which something of our- 
selves may cross. 

One of the principal results of mutual 
service is the growth of confidence, and 
confidence alone spells permanence. Life is 
a long-distance event, not a sprint, spurt, 
or a spasm ; it is the second wind that 
counts, not the showy person who thrives 
as excessively as the toy balloon and then 
goes pop, or peters out with a squeak. 
Permanence counts most. The teacher who 
is continually advertising for pupils, getting 
them, and losing them again as fast, is 
building up nothing of any advantage ; 



150 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

the shop that attracts customers, and sends 
them away dissatisfied, never to return, is 
more like a drain down which to shoot 
money than a business. The Government 
exists by favour of the confidence of the 
nation, and resigns on a vote of "no con- 
fidence " or censure. It is the friends we 
keep rather than the friends we make that 
bring comfort to us as we travel the highway 
together ; the writer lives by the continued 
favour of his public, and starves when it 
deserts him. The things that come within 
our ken, and pass again, only become our 
heart's treasures when memory gives them 
permanence ; it is of scant use to have 
heard some item of information somewhere 
if we are unable to recall it or its details 
when we wish. The general principle runs 
through all these considerations, that the 
temporary and transient have only the 
shadow of a value as compared with the 
permanent. 

Thus we see service building faith, 
which again renders more service possible ; 
and the confidence and faith in their 
turn conduce to permanence. Without this 
element of endurance there is no lasting 
success or satisfaction to be achieved : to 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 151 

build to-day that we may lose to-morrow 
is not a plan that could make appeal to 
the human mind. But to build to-day that 
we may fashion better in the coming days 
is to taste some of the fruits of achievement 
already and to be inspired with the zeal for 
progress, to become identified with the 
"divine urge" that is always whispering to 
us, "On and up, children; on and up." 
It is almost a sufficient end in itself to serve 
that we may serve better, and in increasing 
measure become helpers of our fellow-men ; 
there is indeed more of permanence in 
this aim, which of itself ennobles the spirit, 
than in the fervid seeking for passing 
gratification or elusive wealth which fills 
so many lives. So far as our bodily pres- 
ences are concerned, it may be true that 
we are here to-day and gone to-morrow, 
and we may or may not be able to transmit 
our hardly acquired characteristics to our 
descendants (if so be we have any), but there 
is the larger permanence that we may trans- 
mit by our being, thinking, and expressing 
while we live the life of action ; the effects 
of these are writ upon the tablets of the 
minds of those we influence, and Nature in- 
scribes these influences within her book of 



152 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

memory and they become part of the Things 
That Are. 

Making Friends 

In a chapter devoting itself to the con- 
sideration of Thought and Wealth it may 
seem incongruous to introduce a topic such 
as the present ; but the connection between 
the two is by no means strained. Try and 
collect a subscription from an avowed 
enemy and it will at once appear how diffi- 
cult a thing it is to transact business in the 
face of a hostile attitude of mind ; if there- 
fore hostility makes things hard, then a 
good understanding should facilitate them. 
It is indeed a thankless task to attempt to 
make a living out of one's detractors or 
enemies. But as we go through life we are 
all leaving behind us, in the minds of those 
with whom we come in contact, impressions 
of one kind or another ; we either leave 
people favourably or ill-disposed towards 
us, rarely indifferent. As the permanency 
of these relationships is the thing that 
counts in the long run, it must obviously be 
a matter of some moment which type of 
impression is predominant ; friendship helps, 
and enmity makes more difficult the success 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 153 

that might be ours. It is no question of 
" using " one's friends, or of seeing any 
ulterior and unworthy aim in friendship ; 
it is simply the point that, having to make 
in some measure either friends or foes, the 
better way in life is friendship's way. As a 
result of following this better way, success 
is the more likely to attend our steps ; but 
he who chooses this way, because thereby 
he hopes to attain the greater success, 
will assuredly discover sooner or later that 
the two policies are poles apart. 

It is not so very difficult to make friends. 
The basis of the relationship is mutuality — 
mutual tastes, interests, pursuits, thoughts, 
or sympathy. Our thoughts are vibrating 
all the day and to their piping our lives 
dance ; pipe they glumly, then our steps 
grow laggard and slow, play they a merry 
measure and we laugh. If our thoughts 
so run on happy things that good out- 
measures bad, then we achieve a permanent 
bias in favour of cheerfulness ; and as the 
world welcomes good cheer rather than 
bad, so do the more become our friends. 
But whatever be the general run of our 
thinking, it plays a great part in determin- 
ing the influence we carry around, and in 



154 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

awakening the sympathy of kindred hearts 
we find the basis of friendship. If the 
tuning of our thoughts be selfish, there will 
be few who respond ; why should they ? 
Selfishness is small and for the most part 
unlovely. On the other hand, the person 
whose sympathies are wide and elastic, 
who can adapt himself to the child or the 
cleric, and to the aristocrat as readily as 
to plain Bill Smith, has the power to respond 
to each in the particular fashion which 
appeals ; thus the child will count him 
friend for the interest he took in the tin 
soldiers, the cleric for the sympathetic views 
he expressed on some topic, the aristocrat 
for his common sense, and Bill Smith for 
his absence of side. Now, this again is 
not to be understood as encroaching on the 
limits of hypocrisy; on the contrary, it 
simply means that our friend's sympathies 
are so wide and elastic that there is scarcely 
anyone with whom he cannot find something 
in common ; and that mutual element is 
the basis of friendship's regard. 

Life is not unlike a musical composition, 
and we ourselves the notes upon its pages. 
We keep bobbing in and out together, at 
times making discord with one another, 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 155 

sometimes pausing in sweet concord, and 
now again hitting off in unison with a 
special friend. The Musician uses us all, 
and twines our interests together, makes 
us imitate one another, answer and counter- 
answer, invert each other's remarks, and 
sometimes growl away in an obstinate pedal, 
refusing to budge whatever the Musician 
piles up on top of us, until we get our 
own way in the cadence. Then at the end 
comes the full close, the music ceases and 
the page is turned. 

The ability to adjust to the manifold 
changes of life is our right and title to 
survive, and the delicacy and readiness of 
that adjustment has no little to do with 
our happiness and content. If our family, 
our friends, or our firm are playing their 
music in one key, it is but folly for us to 
enter in another key ; disharmony is the 
result, and discord is no satisfactory thing 
to dwell upon. Discord resolved make the 
concord seem the sweeter, as a lovers' 
quarrel is said (" said," mark you) to add 
point and piquancy to the reconciliation ; 
but in the ordinary way the discordant 
element Is forced to conform, or be ex- 
tinguished. Business can only be trans- 



156 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

acted on the basis of confidence ; and in this 
confidence, sympathy and co-adjustment 
are necessary ingredients. Of what good 
would it be for me to be at odds with the 
gentleman on the other side of the counter, 
or for him to be hoity-toity with me ? 
Wrong adjustment generally causes the 
business machine to come to a stop, or, at 
any rate, to squeak and groan outrageously. 
But if my vis-a-vis with the goods makes 
me feel, or allows me to feel, kindly disposed 
towards him, then I have more than half 
a mind to buy. Some car conductors make 
friends of their passengers and others turn 
them into enemies ; it is as easy to be polite 
as to emulate the bargee. Why should one 
man be able to give a load of passengers the 
distemper by his uncouth manners when it 
does harm all round, makes nobody any 
happier, gives the lie to business, and spoils 
sport generally ? 

Disregard of social adjustment is the mark 
of the fool ; only the inexperienced or the 
very young man wants to batter through 
life attracting difficulties as a fly-paper 
attracts flies. Riding roughshod is but a 
poor exchange for the suaviter-in-modo 
method. If my correspondent uses blatant 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 157 

notepaper he becomes certainly more his 
own enemy than my friend ; if the mourner 
thrusts his black-edged envelope upon me, 
who never knew the late lamented, he 
adjusts but ill to my thinking. Where is 
the sympathy when an export firm prints 
its catalogue in an incomprehensible weights 
and measures system and quotes for its goods 
in English money to a sane and decimalled 
foreign country ? Were it a species of 
humour one could possibly comprehend 
some of it, but such a thorough-going dis- 
regard of the nicety of adjustment and the 
policy of friendship is difficult otherwise 
to understand. " Agree with thine adver- 
sary quickly " is sound policy, but " agree 
with thy customer right off " is sounder and 
conduces more to business ; and whereas 
we are all customers one of another and 
meet daily upon the trivial round and 
common task, why should we not adopt 
that sympathetic outlook and policy which 
makes us happier, because friends ? Inci- 
dentally, this is the way to good business. 

Money-Making as an End 

It is the fashion nowadays to hold the 
money standard as the one by which things 



158 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

big and little should alike be measured ; 
it is all too often taken as the criterion of 
success and the aim of all endeavour. This 
being so, it is not wonderful that the making 
of money exercises so general a lure and 
thrall. Human nature is very prone to 
accept things as it finds them and to 
acquiesce in the standards in general use ; 
it is not given to query and to question, to 
scrutinise and assess upon its own valuation. 
Thus, most of us go out into the world to 
make a living ; presently we find the need 
for more luxury, more comfort, and so we 
aim for more money. After a while money- 
making grips us, and from being a means of 
living it becomes the end and the aim of 
living. We have started, as it were, a 
gigantic machine revolving, we have whirled 
it faster and faster, and almost without 
knowing it we find that the machine has 
got hold of us and is whirling us, day in 
day out, in a mad rush after money. This is 
the comedy of it. The tragedy arises when 
we awaken to the realisation that money is 
not happiness, and that, valuable as it may 
be, it is yet powerless to purchase the things 
that weigh in the scale of true values. 
Money can purchase everything that has 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 159 

its price in cash ; but the things that are 
beyond all valuation are given freely and 
fully. When we barter these we neither 
give nor receive aught but a counterfeit. 
Can you purchase my honour, then have 
I no honour to sell ; the truth on sale is 
probably but a sheaf of lies ; kisses upon 
purchased lips are dead- sea fruit. Affec- 
tion, friendship, and love are profaned when 
money enters into them. We may buy 
luxury, but there are limits to our apprecia- 
tion of it ; compulsory pleasure begets the 
veriest boredom ; excitement palls in time. 
Under whatever guise we may pursue the 
will-o'-the-wisp of happiness we find that 
at length the body tires and the senses 
cease to respond, and wearied nature shuts 
the doors of sight and hearing upon the 
outside world and hushes us to sleep like 
tired and wilful children who do not know 
what is good for them. Then she leaves 
us alone with ourselves in silence and 
counsels us in sleep so that in due course 
we waken with some measure of sanity 
restored, and we see that money and its 
pleasures were powerless to give us anything 
but glitter and glamour, froth, bubble, and 
boredom. 



160 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

As a servant money is by no means to be 
despised ; as a master, driving us tyrant- 
fashion, it is the last word in futility. Deep 
down we all of us feel an ever-present urge, 
a reaching out for happiness ; it is in the 
hope of realising some of this elusive joy 
that the burglar burgles and the murderer 
murders, expecting each to achieve some 
measure of satisfaction. The motive is but 
a variant upon that of the saint who prays, 
and the maid who sings. We are all of us 
groping for the path of evolution, and 
though we hit on bypaths, cross-roads, and 
false turns innumerable, though we are 
cudgelled, buffeted, prodded, and shepherded 
out of these into the straight way by force 
of circumstance, yet in some dim manner 
we arrive at the realisation that when we 
are happy we are more likely to be on the 
right path than when we are miserable. But 
where we make the vastest of mistakes is 
in assuming that money spells happiness. 
The man who possesses money is only too 
well aware that it does nothing of the sort, 
and he will quite likely tell a harrowing tale 
of the way in which money, its investment, 
utilisation, and control, present problems 
that demand keen and constant attention 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 161 

and watchfulness, and absorb no little part 

of the daily energy. 

" When is a man rich ? " might serve 

as a useful subject for a debating society, 

there would doubtless be many diverse 

views, but the simple fact is that the only 

things that really belong to a man are 

the items inscribed upon his unforgetting 

memory. He may truly possess courage, 

affection, charity, and such qualities as 

these cannot be taken from him by any 

power above or below ; but it only needs 

a great war, a financial panic, or the bottom 

falling out of the market to divest a man 

of the financial wealth that he deemed so 

securely his. Or to take another view, no 

larger circumstance than a common cold 

will loosen a man's grip upon his stocks and 

shares ; and when the temperature of his 

body rises to 103 degrees his holding is 

none too secure, and a rise of but a degree 

or two more ensures that his wealth shall 

pass into the hands of others. Permanence 

is the thing that counts ; if the wealth I 

own is the store of love accumulated in my 

heart, I am my wealth, and my wealth 

endures as long as I do ; it goes where I 

go, and if I live again (as I assuredly do) 

11 



162 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

it lives with me. I have no leasehold or 
life-interest in it, for it constitutes myself, 
my personality, without which I cannot be 
said to exist. 

Why, then, should we take so small a view 
of wealth that we can only recognise it in 
the form of coin or scrip ? Why should we 
live laborious days in toil of winning it, 
and endure further anxiety to tend and keep 
it ; why narrow down our outlook to the 
focus point of cash rather than outward 
and wide to the broad sweep of love and 
happiness ? Do we believe that if we seek 
first the kingdom within, all these things 
shall be added ? Does anyone believe that 
if he moulds his life fine and his character 
soundly sweet, he will never lack the where- 
withal to pay his rent, buy clothes, and feed 
himself and those who look to him ? Few 
believe the words they so glibly speak ; 
but let observation tell you true. Can you 
recall one single case where a man who 
looked after his mind, his morals, and his 
physical health was left to starve, or was 
even in any lasting financial stress ? Why, 
the world is crying aloud for balanced men 
and women, people who are really rich in 
all that makes for strength and endurance ; 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 163 

it cannot get them, it is willing to pay their 
own price for them, but there are not 
enough to go round. Such folk as these are 
far too valuable to be allowed to starve or 
go short. The Bible words are true ; the 
discovery of our latent divinity may not 
indeed make us financial magnates, nor yet 
enable us to lounge in luxury, but it will 
make us rich in happiness and impervious 
to the ups and downs of the Stock Exchange 
quotations. On the other hand, the dedi- 
cation of our souls to the service of money- 
spinning will narrow us down to the in- 
significance of the ordinary pot-hunter who 
is not out for the game but for the prize- 
money. A man may have his shelves 
ablaze with such trophies and yet his heart 
be suffering from fatty degeneration, and 
the danger of the pursuit of riches as an 
end is much the same ; the pots may be 
there, but there may also be the decay of all 
that should be high, noble, and secure. 

Money and the Mind 

Qn various occasions while speaking on 
the platform we have made reference to the 
close and intimate connection which exists 
between the thinking of the individual 



164 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

and his bank account, and rarely have the 
remarks been received with other than 
incredulity and derision. Yet the fact 
remains that such a reflection of the man's 
mind is truly to be found. This is one of 
those cases where, with only the beginning 
and the end apparent, and with all the 
intermediate steps omitted, the ordinary 
man sees a miracle where in truth there is 
nothing but cause and effect. When the 
connecting links are supplied he sees the 
chain of events following in logical and 
obvious order, and then replies, " Of course ; 
why, anybody could see that ! " For life 
is full of things which we could see if we 
took the trouble, and might notice were we 
only sufficiently alert. What, for instance, 
can be more interesting than to occupy 
the front seat on a car threading its way 
through the city traffic ? We can feel the 
actual working of the driver's mind demon- 
strate itself in the running of the machine. 
There in front is an opening in the press of 
vehicles : " Just room for me there," thinks 
the driver, answered immediately by more 
speed from the car. " No, I can't," argues 
the brain, then follows debate and hesita- 
tion on the part of the engine. " Why 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 165 

can't that fool look where he's going ! 
Nearly ran me down — confound him ! " (or 
words to that effect translated into the 
vernacular) and the machine is so shocked 
that it stops dead and almost throws the 
passengers from their seats. The thinking 
and mental workings of the driver's brain 
are translated into the antics of the vehicle, 
and a half-mile ride becomes a lesson in 
psychology. So also we may believe that 
a bank manager might quite feasibly make 
a chart of a depositor's account, with its 
variations, fluctuations, depressions, over- 
drafts, and high-pressure systems, and de- 
duce from it on the average a fair estimate 
of the temperament of the individual. 

Supposing that we have a man in business 
and responsible for the transactions of his 
firm, it will be tolerably clear that his 
decisions will follow the lines of his tempera- 
ment ; it could hardly be otherwise. Con- 
sequently if his mind be of the erratic, 
unstable kind, his various decisions must 
partake of the same nature ; sometimes 
they will be good, sometimes bad, and the 
business will prosper or suffer accordingly. 
This means that his balance must show the 
erratic variations of his temperament. On 



166 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

the other hand, a man of placid, equable 
disposition will be much more consistent 
in his plans and his policy, and this must 
manifestly result in an absence of the 
erratic fluctuations of the former case. A 
careless man will make mistakes and errors, 
and the ordinary result of these will be to 
lose money ; each loss of course means a 
drop in the figures, and conversely the 
absence of such losses demonstrates the con- 
trolling hand of the careful man. 

Nobody who can avoid it does business 
with a disagreeable man ; if it be possible, 
we do business with our friends in prefer- 
ence to those we dislike. This seems such 
an obvious remark that we feel almost 
compelled to apologise for having it put in 
print ; but the obvious deduction is that it 
pays to be pleasant. There are, as every- 
body knows, a great many people who 
nevertheless have not grasped this most 
elementary point ; consequently it seems 
necessary to put the fact on record. If 
everyone set out to make himself pleasant 
to the people with whom he has to do 
business, the wear and tear would probably 
be halved ; incidentally it is quite possible 
that his profit might be doubled. As a 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 167 

matter of experience we find ourselves 
patronising the shops where we can be sure 
of a civil word and ready attention rather 
than where we are greeted with a machine- 
like " Next, please ! " type of expedition 
which allows of nothing more than bare 
politeness, and sometimes not even that. 
Therefore the uncivil shopkeeper suffers in 
pocket from his disposition, even though 
he realises it not ; so also does the bad- 
mannered dentist, doctor, teacher, and any- 
one else. 

It will now be increasingly clear that 
every type of temperament must have its 
financial reflex, and further consideration 
can only serve to demonstrate the self- 
evident nature of our seemingly far-fetched 
proposition. Is it not inevitable that the 
far-sighted man, whose outlook takes into 
consideration many arguments of weight, 
will prove a better business man than the 
one who takes short views ? And must not 
this again have its corresponding monetary 
results ? Inertia of mind must also result 
in lack of business enterprise, with the 
natural result that the individual will be 
left behind by his competitors. The rash 
man is sure to make the fatal mistake some 



168 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

time, even if he survives his minor errors 
longer than one might expect ; timidity 
keeps a business ineffective and small, 
while miserliness skimps the tar and spoils 
the ship. It is surely hardly necessary to 
labour the point further, since even these 
few considerations amply demonstrate that 
the financial result must depend upon and 
be commensurate with the mental attitude 
of the man in charge. It is true that we 
are not all, and cannot all be, in charge of 
the business of the firm, but we are cer- 
tainly in charge of our own affairs, and to 
these precisely similar principles apply. 
There is not one law for the business of 
firms and another for individuals ; neither 
is such a law only capable of application to 
one particular type of business ; the prin- 
ciple of "As within, so without " is of 
universal application. 

The gist of the matter — to advance a 
stage further — is simply this : that since 
our financial affairs are so largely a reflex 
of our own mental selves, then if we desire 
to effect a financial improvement the proper 
place to initiate the effort is in the mind. 
This of course is heresy to your short- 
sighted individual who desires above all 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 169 

things to be practical, but gentlemen of 
this type are fast getting out of date. 
" Money makes money " would probably be 
their slogan, but there are many men who 
have had money and have not found this 
so ; money plus brains makes money, and 
money without brains seldom prospers. 
But brains can be trusted to make money 
(if that be the desire), while money can 
never make brains ; the crux is always the 
thought as cause, and the tangible result 
as its reflex. The pity is that the free flow 
of thought is so often hampered by limita- 
tions of a hundred kinds that have been 
allowed to establish themselves first in the 
mind and then show themselves in circum- 
stances and conditions. 

The man who feels he must economise, 
and so gets to think in terms of parsimony, 
is likely to end in a state of chronic im- 
pecuniosity, with the thing he feared duly 
come upon him. An efficiency expert of 
my acquaintance pours scorn on the people 
whose thoughts are centred on trifling 
points ; " see a pin and pick it up," he 
asserts, is a pernicious doctrine, and we 
should never pick up less than sixpence ! 
There is a sound principle in this advice, 



170 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

for the mind that thinks in the smallest 
units is not likely to gain a grasp of large 
affairs. It may be observed that the very 
poor necessarily think in farthings, while 
those a stage above think in pence. Now- 
adays even the average schoolboy has begun 
to use shillings as his units, while his father 
in business takes the pound — the fifty, 
hundred, or a thousand pounds as his unit, 
according to the scope of his ideas and his 
business. Thought on the small side means 
achievement to match ; inability to part 
with money becomes a literal close-fisted- 
ness and a species of financial constipation 
which bodes ill for the worldly well-being 
of the individual. But the realisation in- 
deed that money is our servant instead of 
master, and that it answers in so large a 
measure to the beckoning of mind, is at 
once a big step forward and an incentive 
so to regulate the activities of the mind 
as to secure the desired reaction in the 
realm of finance. 

Sectional Interests 

Having seen that there is thus a striking 
reflection of an individual's mind in his 
affairs, it is interesting to proceed to notice 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 171 

how this same principle works on a larger 
scale. As we might anticipate,, we can 
trace its operations in the case of aggre- 
gations of individuals, in business firms, 
societies, committees, and nations ; for if 
one person thinking along certain lines 
produces a corresponding result, two or 
more should naturally by their common 
thought produce a greater effect. A firm, 
for instance, is an aggregation of individ- 
uals supposedly working with a common 
purpose, a kind of human co-operative 
machine ; but differing from a machine in 
that each individual part or member has a 
measure of free-will to give, grudge, or 
refuse his labour. Now it must be self- 
evident that the best results can only be 
secured by the co-ordination and co-opera- 
tion of each of these parts. When a piston 
jams, a fly-wheel bursts, or a valve sticks, 
the whole machine breaks down ; whereas 
the proper adjustment and united work- 
ing of all the parts is necessary to obtain 
the full power from the engine. In the 
business firm success can only be achieved 
by the efficient working of each and every 
member, from the highest to the lowest ; 
if, indeed, it be not a misuse of terms 



172 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

to refer to either high or low where all 
are necessary and mutually indispensable. 
The manager may do his level best, the 
shareholders may have supplied the re- 
quisite capital, the traveller may have 
secured the order and the works have turned 
out the goods, but if the office boy copies 
the address wrongly and sends the parcel 
half-way round the world, all the efforts of 
the others will be rendered futile. Again, 
everything may be in order and yet a surly 
commissionaire at the outer door may 
offend prospective customers so that they 
go elsewhere ; thus it is perfectly possible 
for one to be a stumbling-block for the 
feet of many. 

Broadly speaking, it is what we might 
term the " spirit of the house " that de- 
termines what the success of the firm shall 
be, and the results must needs be half- 
hearted if the efforts of the workers are so. 
On the contrary, by " team play " instead 
of individual striving quite extraordinary 
results may be produced. The spirit of the 
house is but the spirit of its aggregate 
members, and this spirit is, on the part of 
the individual, simply the result of his past 
and present thought. Wise employers are 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 173 

now beginning to wake up to this elementary 
fact and are going in for what is termed 
" staff training " ; so far so good — but the 
only staff training that is likely to produce 
lasting results is that which induces the 
staff to train itself by regulated thinking. 
It is impossible to lay down a law of the 
spirit of the house as one lays linoleum ; 
one cannot compel anyone to think along 
any particular lines, and yet this combined 
thinking is at the very root of progress. 
Mixed thinking produces mixed results, and 
contrary thinking simply issues in confusion. 
Where the heads of departments refuse to 
work together much waste effort can safely 
be prophesied, just as we have illustration 
of the colossal muddle that may be produced 
by government departments at loggerheads. 
The same point is clearly brought out in 
games, the finest effort is combined effort, 
and the most futile is the lack of co-ordina- 
tion when the common interest is sub- 
ordinated to individual display. A selfish 
half-back can ruin an international side ; 
so also can a single bad-tempered growler 
upset a whole office or works. An in- 
competent teacher on a staff can produce 
quite extraordinary results in the way of 



174 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

dislocating the general discipline and un- 
settling the habits of the boys, even as one 
obstreperous individual on a committee can 
act like a handful of sand thrown into the 
machinery. 

In the larger world of affairs the interests 
of a section placed before the interests of 
the community can, as we have too often 
seen, exercise a paralysing effect upon 
business. As the financial status of a man 
bears closely upon his thought and tempera- 
ment, so does the business progress of a 
nation or a community hang upon its think- 
ing. The thoughts may be those of in- 
dividuals or those of collective units such as 
Trade Unions, but the principle in either 
case is exactly the same ; united thinking 
spells strength and progress, and the logical 
end to opposed thinking is waste and 
muddle, and finally suicide. An individual 
business man will go down to his com- 
petitors if his wrong thoughts compel him 
to charge more for the same goods, or the 
same price for inferior goods ; and the same 
thing applies to a firm, an industry, or a 
nation. We do not live, and cannot live 
in a world of our own, nor can we restrict 
the application of general principles. If, 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH . 175 

therefore, we are to progress as a nation 
it is essential that sectional thinking shall 
give way to national thought, and that 
thought when it comes to deal with world 
problems shall also be subordinate to world 
thinking. Collective thought is but the 
aggregate of individual thought, and it 
follows that the problem narrows down to 
the education of the individual thinker ; and 
in the last issue he must educate himself. 

There are, of course, two types of think- 
ing, the bond and the free. Germany 
illustrated the immense force generated by 
organised thinking of the bonded type. 
The pattern of thought was set from the 
top ; the All-highest set to work to hypno- 
tise his nation by every subtle and blatant 
suggestion of power, vainglory, and domin- 
ance. The crime of his dupes was that they 
accepted his thoughts, instead of thinking 
for themselves ; their thinking was bond 
instead of free, patterned instead of original, 
and, unhappily for them and the world, 
the pattern was faulty to the verge of in- 
sanity — or even beyond it. But be that 
as it may, the point is that such an immense 
force, material and mental, was generated 
by the combined thinking that it took the 



176 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

rest of the world black years of effort, pain, 
and endeavour to overcome it ; and even 
then it was only overthrown by the rest 
of the world working on the same plan and 
combining their thinking for a common 
ideal of right and allowing it to manifest 
in circumstance and power. 

Here is the lesson blazed in letters of fire 
on the page of history, that the sectional 
interests of one nation preferred by force 
over the general interests of civilisation have 
cast that nation into utter darkness, broken 
and despised ; yet we are to-day in a like 
danger of forcing sectional interests to the 
detriment of the general well-being. On 
the contrary side there is practically nothing 
impossible for a nation to accomplish by 
directed and co-ordinated thinking ; the 
world looks to us to see the manner in which 
we as a nation shall solve our troubles, and 
upon the efforts of future days hang other 
destinies than our own. Animosity, hatred, 
and distrust are no safe bases for any social 
order ; grave causes for these there have 
been in the past, and in measure there are 
still, but after the fires of suffering are we 
not seared enough and strengthened enough 
to make a fresh start on the basis of co- 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 177 

operation ? After all we are brothers still, 
though the tie of brotherhood has been 
sadly strained ; and a greater glory waits 
but for the regulation of our thoughts to a 
common purpose. But for sectional in- 
terests to prevail, for key industries to 
refuse their labour till they have the nation 
by the throat, for Trades Unions to act 
frankly upon the basis of compulsion, power, 
and force, and for individual men to hand 
over their thinking and be represented by 
the thousand on a card vote delivered 
at the dictate of this or that leader, these 
are indeed disquieting symptoms pointing 
to a state of affairs which if long enough 
continued simply means national suicide. 

Production and Invention 

Only two ways have yet been discovered 
in which a man can discharge his debts ; 
one is by doing some honest work in order 
to pay them, and the other is by marrying 
a rich wife. In the case of a nation this 
latter alternative is impossible, therefore 
it only remains for the nation to do some 
downright hard work. This, however, is 
a solution which is to many far from accept- 
able ; they would like something easier. 

12 



178 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

The point of Production is being hammered 
right and left, but there are dour facts of 
human nature to be faced. It is impossible 
to compel a man to produce more than he 
wishes, he can only be induced to do so ; 
and this will only come about when he 
thinks it will be to his interest to produce 
more. Thus the problem again is one of his 
thoughts. There is an innate spirit of 
opposition latent in most of us, particularly 
this seems to be the heritage of the Briton ; 
he is bred to the idea of freedom, even 
though at times in application it be but a 
philosophical abstraction. Thus his ten- 
dency is ever to answer " You shall " by 
"I'll see you somethinged first " — and this 
naturally makes the situation one that de- 
mands tactful handling. On the other 
hand, if he wants to do a thing, opposition 
merely makes him determine to do it all 
the harder, consequently if he is once in- 
duced to realise that his best interests are 
involved in increased production, then he 
will assuredly see the people who desire to 
prevent that increased production " some- 
thinged first." 

Production depends primarily upon re- 
sources, organisation, team-work, and the 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 179 

full use of machinery ; and it is with the 
two latter that the chief problems . arise. 
As regards machinery, there is a stage in 
civilisation in which man has to wrestle 
with Nature for his daily bread, and so long 
as he sticks to hard work he is likely to have 
to continue the wrestling process ; but 
directly he invokes the aid of his brain to 
provide machinery to do more work and 
to save him trouble, he is on the up-grade. 
If one machine does the work of fifty men 
and only needs the services of one man to 
tend it, then forty-nine others are liberated 
to help the progress of the world in other 
ways. Temporarily, and in the short view, 
they may be displaced, but the increased 
demand arising from the lessened cost of 
production will not only give added con- 
venience or comfort all round, but will 
provide work for many others in the way 
of sale, advertising, and distribution. In 
addition, the possible sales abroad will help 
to pay our debts. More machinery, there- 
fore, means more production, lowered cost, 
increased convenience, and national wealth. 
The opposition to machinery has mainly 
come from the workers themselves who 
feared to be displaced ; but would any 



180 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

sane person now desire to dispense with the 
sewing-machine, the looms, and the thousand 
and one contrivances that are now part and 
parcel of our daily lives ? It is simply not 
practical politics to think of returning to the 
stage when these routine operations must 
be done by hand ; the supply under such 
conditions could not even get within range 
of the world's demands. Whereas we may 
reasonably expect that, with the intro- 
duction of further labour-saving machinery, 
production generally will rise to a degree 
which will ensure the worker having far 
more time, after his necessary work is 
done, for cultivating the higher side of 
his nature. But with the world clamour- 
ing for manufactured articles, and with a 
natural limit fixed to man's toil, it must 
follow that we can only look for relief 
in the direction of machinery which shall 
be able to multiply the fruits of a man's 
exertions. 

Machinery itself is but the product of 
thought ; someone thinks of something 
which has not occurred to anyone else, and 
there is the invention. The inventive 
faculty generally is not sufficiently en- 
couraged ; inventors, as pioneers, should be 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 181 

in the van of progress, but more often find 
themselves left very much behind.. The 
conservatism of many nations sternly dis- 
courages the introduction of new ideas ; 
but though we may venerate our relics and 
value their old-time associations, there is 
no valid reason why we should extend 
that same consideration to out-of-date 
machinery and methods. There is a place 
for imagination and inspiration in business, 
and it is their function to direct thought 
into channels of expansion and growth. 
The animal lacks imagination, and there- 
fore continues to do exactly the same thing 
in response to the same stimulus ; a man 
with imagination can be relied upon to do 
the unexpected. If there are six shop- 
keepers in a row and five of them are 
deficient in imagination, while the sixth 
pictures himself buying all the others up, 
if he be a man of action as well as dreams, 
we may be reasonably sure that he will 
presently possess those six shops and that 
the other five shopkeepers will be working 
for him. Grooviness is a deadly complaint ; 
it is a species of creeping paralysis of the 
power of thought and imagination, and it 
results in that truly dreadful but eminent 



182 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

respectability which consorts with obsolete 
methods. 

Imagination is evidence of mental vitality 
and elasticity, but, like rubber, it perishes 
with age ; there generally comes a time 
when it proves easier to follow old associa- 
tions of ideas rather than make new ones. 
There is an element of pathos about that 
mental condition which elects to continue 
in the old error because it is too late to 
change to the new truth ; it has its counter- 
part in the unwillingness many folk show 
to parting with old and worn-out furniture. 
Learn to scrap and discard anything and 
everything that can be improved upon, 
avoid fixity and deadening routine ; go to 
the office a different way three times a week, 
change the furniture round, order a different 
newspaper occasionally, make some varia- 
tion in your lunch, and prove yourself 
something more than a creature of habit 
by responding to the ordinary stimulus in 
some fresh fashion. Of course it is easier 
and more comfortable to continue on in 
the same old way, but it is the beginning 
of the sleeping-sickness. 

A clean, well-strung body helps the 
development of a fit and finely strung 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 183 

nervous system, and to such a mind come 
many fresh ideas. Inspiration is not the 
privilege of the elect alone, it is more 
assuredly the commonplace of the keen, 
clean, and alert, in business and in any 
other direction. Its source may be found 
in many diverse directions, in books, in 
people, in situations, in lines of thought, 
and even in forces apparently less generally 
recognised. Ideas " flash " in our minds, 
the inspiration appears spontaneously, but 
whence ? Did the brain secrete the thought, 
or do we stultify ourselves by accepting the 
explanation that it just came by itself — 
which explains nothing ? For the real ex- 
planation of this and kindred happenings 
we need to delve deep into the nature of 
our own selves, and this is too long and 
serious a quest upon which to embark at 
this particular juncture. But the practical 
point is that both imagination and inspira- 
tion are helped by cleanliness and activity 
of body and mind ; and that with clearer 
perception of the possibilities of thought 
there will come a voluntary and ready 
response in the way of work and production 
to the pressing needs of to-day. Self-realisa- 
tion and self-responsibility are two prime 



184 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

necessities, and with their development 
will come the dawn of greater possibilities 
both for the individual and the nation. 

Business and Life 

As a natural process the facts of experi- 
ence sort themselves out in our minds, and 
almost without recognising the method we 
find that we have developed a decalogue 
of our own. On the principle of " once 
bitten, twice shy," we make a mental list 
of the things to be avoided, and on the score 
of their satisfactory results we gradually 
learn, on the positive side, the things we are 
well advised to do. This really is only 
Nature teaching us the way to evolve, by 
attaching pleasure-pain results to the various 
lines of action in order to demonstrate to us 
their good or evil tendencies. But, as a 
step further, we find that just as the Deca- 
logue itself can be summarised into two 
immensely important principles, relating to 
our conduct towards (1) the Deity, and (2) 
our fellow-men, so also our laws of business 
experience amalgamate with our general 
principles of life. We have seen that the 
root idea of business is service ; but any- 
thing that savours of sharp practice, deceit, 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 185 

or misrepresentation, is quite clearly utterly 
opposed to this ideal. Therefore we say 
that " Honesty is the best policy." But 
honesty itself is but an offspring of the 
parent stock of love, and though we do not 
use the word in the business world, yet we 
have a number of synonyms which stand 
essentially for the same idea. To be honest, 
straight, four-square, dependable, just, con- 
siderate, polite, and so forth, is to show 
qualities which are essentially those of the 
man who has love at the foundation of his 
character. 

A man's actions in the business world 
are ruled by his thoughts just as much as 
in any other department of life ; his char- 
acter will inevitably show in his words and 
deeds, as well as in his judgments and 
decisions. In other words, his capacity as a 
business man depends upon the nature and 
quality of his thinking ; but what propor- 
tion of business men set out systematically 
to develop their thinking powers and to 
set their thoughts scientifically in the de- 
sired direction as a prelude to successful 
business ? The youngster starts office-boy 
work, addressing letters, copying, and per- 
haps posting up entries ; he may further 



186 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

get on to taking down the letters in short- 
hand and then typing them, or perhaps be 
put to filing the correspondence. But these 
are all the details of business routine, 
necessary no doubt, yet where do they lead 
our friend ? Who is there to teach him the 
broad principles that are thus obscured by 
the maze of detail work ? Very likely 
because he does not grasp any essential 
unity or purpose running through these 
daily activities, he loses interest ; then he 
makes mistakes. It is impossible for him 
accurately to observe a thing which possesses 
no interest for him, and thus he lays the 
foundations of a bad memory ; if he has not 
observed accurately he is not likely to 
remember. In proportion as he forgets, 
he grows unreliable. To lose sight of the 
principles that should animate even the 
humblest in the business world is to 
render the work ineffective in the extreme. 
The training of the thinking faculties 
therefore ought to be the very ABC of 
a business groundwork, and there are 
very many adults of business experience 
who condemn themselves to mediocrity, 
because their thoughts have not been 
sufficiently alert to enable them to master 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 187 

the principles which underlie the masses 
of detail. 

The call to-day is for a higher standard 
of achievement, for greater competence, in- 
sight, and foresight on the part of those who 
are responsible for the control and direction 
of affairs, and also in those who co-operate 
in carrying out the instructions given. The 
old days when the half of an inch-and-three- 
eighths was " half-an-inch, an eighth, and 
half-an-eighth " are gone never to return ; 
rule of thumb is as extinct as the dodo, and 
for much the same reason — namely, that 
it could not keep pace with the march of 
events. There is an extraordinary amount 
of muddled thinking rampant to-day, and 
short-sightedness prevails when the only 
hope lies in vision and the long view. Nor 
is it only in the upper ranks that this 
vision is needed, it must permeate right 
through the rank and file, for the co-opera- 
tion of all is necessary for the common weal. 
It is sheer stupidity to ask what chance 
have the rank and file to develop this power 
of vision and insight ; the chance lies in 
the power of every individual to direct his 
thoughts and to use the evidence of his 
senses. Luckily for mankind it is not 



188 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

possible to " corner " thought. Even the 
humblest can make up his mind to see two 
things every day where he saw one before, 
and to read two things instead of one ; this 
will give twice the stock of concepts in his 
mind. From these concepts he will be 
able to fashion or to understand far more 
than twice as many ideas as before ; and 
from the increase of his ideas there must 
necessarily come a definite increase in the 
validity of his judgments, since they are 
founded on a wider range of ideas. Thus 
by this extremely simple process of opening 
the eyes a trifle wider and keeping the other 
avenues of sense active, a man must inevit- 
ably rise in the scale of life, even though 
he never expends one penny on tuition or 
comes within a hundred miles of a teacher. 
When everybody observes twice as much, the 
nation will be far more than twice as sane. 
Academic knowledge, as such, is not 
needed ; anything that is up in the clouds 
because it has no connection with terra 
flrma is rightly placed and had better stay 
there. But clear thinking on fundamentals 
is a prime necessity ; and it is at least 
highly desirable that the hard-headed prac- 
tical man should develop a measure of 



THOUGHT AND WEALTH 189 

spiritual discernment to help him in his 
business. He will then be less likely to 
commit the fatal mistake of keeping the 
watertight bulkheads shut between Sundays 
and weekdays, and between business and 
life. A business man cannot be all shrewd- 
ness and finance, any more than a chicken 
can be all bones and beak ; he must have 
a heart somewhere. His heart, moreover, 
should play its legitimate part in his work, 
along with his brains. Mankind has mag- 
nificent material in the rough, and just 
so soon as the nations set to work to realise 
the fundamental relation of thought and 
spirit to every single problem in front of 
them, the world will marvel at the result. 
But there is no vicarious element in the 
process, we must by no means wait to have 
things put in order for us ; the responsi- 
bility is upon each to work to make his 
brain secure a greater measure of acumen 
and judgment, and to point his thoughts 
to develop a finer physical health, and a 
great and growing spirituality which will 
automatically disinfect the germs of his 
materialism, and quicken his vision through 
the outward circumstance to the heart of 
things. 



CHAPTER IV 

THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 

The Quest of Happiness 

Consideration of the question of happiness 
seems to be inseparably bound up with the 
understanding of our own nature. It is not 
sufficient to define happiness in terms that 
will be true of one person and not of another, 
we want to find some general basis which 
shall be true in substance for all ; and this 
manifestly is only possible when we can 
arrive at some general principles of our own 
being which are universally applicable. I 
am quite aware that the mere attempt to 
find a solution of so comprehensive a 
problem may excite ridicule, yet even if one 
can make but the slightest contribution 
that may be of assistance to someone else, 
it is a manifest duty to do it. There are 
so many problems, widely differing in their 
form and conditions, yet rooted in the same 
soil of ignorance of ourselves, that perhaps 

190 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 191 

the tracing of their origin may serve a 
double purpose in also indicating a common 
solution. Many letters from widely differ- 
ing sources have shown us the inner work- 
ings of minds groping towards the light, of 
hearts searching after happiness, and of 
characters aimlessly adrift upon the sea of 
life for sheer lack of an objective. The 
tragedy is ignorance. Therefore, though it 
be but little there may be to tell them, yet 
that little shall not be denied. 

Man is a spirit. As a religious statement 
we may believe that to be scientifically 
correct ; as a scientific statement we believe 
it to be in conformity with religion. It 
is not our intention here to go into the 
reasons, or to debate the question either 
from the religious or the scientific side ; it 
must suffice to point out that this con- 
ception is really the fundamental of all 
religions, and that hypnotic experiment, 
psychic research, and what may be termed 
spiritual-psychology are adding testimony 
of increasing weight year by year to con- 
firm it and to make it more certain. At 
any rate, if we accept it as a working theory 
we can put it to the test of actual experi- 
ence ; and if it explains things that were 



192 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

not clear before, and in other ways fits in 
with facts as if it were true, we are justified 
in assuming that it is true until such time 
as it disproves itself by refusing to fit in 
with facts. In the nature of things we are 
bound to utilise conceptions of truth which 
by reason of our own limitations are im- 
perfect ; therefore we need not hesitate to 
adopt a conception provisionally, especially 
should it promise to be one fruitful of 
result. 

Most people are apt, when they think 
of the matter at all, to regard themselves 
as consisting of a body possessing a spirit ; 
we wish to reverse the conception and to 
regard the self as a spirit having a body. 
Body and spirit work together in a partner- 
ship of the most intimate kind, but they are 
not inseparable even during life, as many 
strange experiences with anaesthetics, in 
hypnosis, in some dreams, in clairvoyance, 
and in trance conditions will testify. The 
partnership is, of course, permanently dis- 
solved at death and the spirit liberated to 
inhabit a new environment clad in an 
appropriate vehicle. Memory during life 
is absolute, but it is not merely the delicate 
nervous system of the physical body that 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 193 

contains the record, it is also inscribed upon 
the spirit counterpart. Consequently it 
matters little that the body-duplicate is 
wiped out by the hand of death and crumbles 
into its component chemicals, since the 
spirit-original remains. The importance of 
memory, which truly constitutes our per- 
sonality, grows vastly as soon as we take 
the view-point of spirit ; we see the self 
ushered at the great change into a spiritual 
realm a bundle of memories, a personality, 
a character, built on lines for which the 
individual must accept responsibility, since 
it is mainly the result of his thoughts and 
actions here. This present life is there- 
fore simply to be regarded as a training 
school for the spirit part of us. 

Our life here and now is demonstrably 
a state of progression, sometimes upward 
and sometimes down, but never static ; we 
grow in body and mind in spite of our- 
selves. Necessarily also we grow either 
richer or poorer in spirit, there again we 
have no option ; in fact as spirits, that 
is the object of our being here. If we use 
life aright we grow in spiritual wisdom 
and stature, and so put ourselves in line 

with our own evolution. There is an ever- 

13 



194 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

present urge always insistent in our lives, 
it is the call of God the Spirit to man the 
spirit for unison and approach ; it is the 
same in kind, though sanctified in degree, 
as the insistent call in the lover for union 
with the beloved ; it is the same in kind 
as the call of one tuning-fork for the sym- 
pathetic response of another. Unity satis- 
fies, but the individual finds only restless 
unquiet until that unity be achieved. So 
also we ever feel the call within us for 
approach to the unknown God, and buried 
deep within us there is ever a reaching- out 
after mystery in the unvoiced hope that we 
may travel one step farther on the quest. 
The love that is in all of us echoes to the 
love of God, and we must needs love Him 
since He first loved us. We may quarrel 
with the name of God, and prefer the use 
of other terminology, but the facts demon- 
strate themselves. The urge has a thousand 
forms, its pull may be seen in molecular 
attraction, in chemical affinity, in gravity, 
in magnetic force, in sex, in imitation, in 
worship and adoration ; diversities of action, 
but the same spirit. The lower forms of 
life are all unconscious of the compelling 
force, mankind is but dimly and half- 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 195 

conscious of it, while it is left for the 
awakened man to co-operate in the great 
purpose and to assist his own evolution. 

Things that are inimical to our highest 
interests and conflict with our evolutionary 
progress demonstrate their character sooner 
or later by resulting in pain ; they may 
destroy peace of mind or health of body, 
alienate us from love or take away our 
means of subsistence. They may manifest 
in countless diverse ways, but the function 
of all alike is to show us that we are stray- 
ing from the path ; that as swimmers we 
strive against the tide that sets Godward 
and vex ourselves in vain. If we are wise 
we learn the lesson, and so put ourselves 
again in line with the great purposes. Thus, 
taking a very broad view of life's processes, 
we see that lasting happiness can only 
come through our being in line with the 
"tendency that makes for righteousness" ; 
that is to say, when we are walking along 
the path of our development and evolution 
as spirits. True, happiness may be tran- 
sitory and a delusion, it may be the will- 
o'-the-wisp that lands us in the bog, it may 
favour us but to fool us ; but, taking it in 
the large, the life that brings lasting and 



196 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

growing happiness is the life best lived. 
Conversely, if we are to find that happiness 
it will be by first finding out the laws of 
spiritual growth and evolution, and thereto 
adjusting our philosophy and ideas, and in 
accordance therewith basing our daily lives 
and actions. 

The First Appeal 

It is always a difficult question to decide 
what is the best method of appeal to the 
average person, he is apt to seem armour- 
plated in self-satisfaction and impervious 
to so many considerations that one would 
think ought to move him. Apathy and 
the " don't care " spirit are among the 
hardest to combat, and we are compelled 
to realise that the ordinary individual is 
more or less self-centred. Observation de- 
monstrates that all around us are men 
and women in varied stages of development, 
intellectual, moral, and spiritual, ranging 
from the rudimentary to the highly evolved. 
Broadly we might divide these people into 
three classes — the selfish, the altruistic, and 
the spiritual ; but it must be confessed that 
the first class predominates, and though 
the selfishness is of all possible gradations, 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 197 

from the crass to the lightly-marked, yet 
the shadow of self in some measure dims 
the light of nearly all of us. 

It follows therefore that if we would 
discover the lever that is to move human 
nature, the dynamic that is to make appeal, 
we must look for it at different levels for 
each of these classes ; and for the most part 
we shall find that the appeal to self-interest 
is the only one that is of any practical use. 
It seems at first sight a lamentable con- 
clusion, but further consideration tends to 
show that it could hardly be otherwise ; 
everybody has a vulnerable spot somewhere, 
and if we would reach the individual we 
must take the opportunity as it serves. 
The boy reads his penny dreadfuls with 
avidity, and if we try to turn him on to 
real literature before he has developed his 
taste to that extent, it not only fails to 
interest him, but we run the risk of alto- 
gether killing his desire to read. Let him 
go on with his " dreadfuls " until they tire 
him out and make him desire something 
better. If therefore a man can only be 
approached on the level at which he hopes 
to get something out of the proposition, 
then it is advisable to go to him with a 



198 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

promise of something for himself. If the 
better side of him is as yet undeveloped, 
an appeal directed to it not only stands 
every possibility of failing, but also of 
leaving a residue of prejudice in his mind. 

Many good folk grieve over the fact that 
most of the advertisements of the day make 
frank appeal to self-interest, but it is the 
business of the advertiser to know human 
nature and to be a judge of what " pulls." 
It is even necessary for those systems of 
self- culture and mental development which 
contain much of real value and high import 
to employ these methods of getting hold 
of the public ; were they to base their 
claims on a higher ground they would 
probably fail to reach the majority of those 
whom at present they attract. Naturally 
they incur the scorn and the scoffing of the 
truly elect ; and almost inevitably thejr fail 
to interest, and sometimes positively repel, 
those whose true development has out- 
ranged the purely personal and reached the 
altruistic. But these are the individuals 
who do not need the information. There 
seems to be something in the nature of a 
scale of approach to human nature, there 
is the appeal to the passions — the lowest 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 199 

of all ; then to the pocket, and proceeding 
upwards the appeal travels to the stomach, 
then to the heart, then the head, and finally 
there is the appeal to the unfolding divinity 
of spirit. But it is useless to take the 
dogmatic line and appeal on the take-it-or- 
leave-it, and anyhow-its-your-loss principle ; 
secure a point of contact and thence work 
for better things, but without a contact no 
current of opportunity can flow. I once 
was able to secure such a point of contact 
by undertaking to work out the astronomical 
and astrological calculations referring to the 
various jockeys engaged in the prominent 
races ; I was to share in the proceeds. I 
still possess the cheque (uncashed) for the 
first week's profits, and I keep it as a 
curiosity ; but, after that, I do not know 
whether the planets in their courses knew 
that I had secured my opening and there- 
fore refused further assistance, but at any 
rate there were no more profits to be dis- 
tributed, and we turned to higher things, 
my friend and I. 

The Salvation Army uses the most appro- 
priate methods of appeal to those whom 
they wish to reach ; if a big drum be 
necessary, by all means employ it. If it 



200 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

were possible to gather in more by making 
use of still more rousing methods they would 
be justified. So, on our present theme, if 
it be possible to reach people by appeal- 
ing to their self-interest in the first case, it 
not only should be done, but in many 
cases it is the only thing to do. But once 
having secured the point of contact it is 
not a matter of great difficulty gradually to 
tone up the rate of vibration, leading on 
imperceptibly from ideal to ideal, until 
the altruistic standpoint is at length well 
in sight. But the altruistic method of 
approach — midway between the selfish and 
the spiritual — is not adapted for either 
of the extremes. Secularists and members 
of ethical denominations are cold to the 
spiritual appeal, though they may respond 
at once to the appeal on behalf of humanity ; 
they do not take any after-life or spiritual 
destiny into consideration. While to appeal 
to the truly spiritual person on the ground 
of self-interest is simply to turn him away 
in disgust. The dynamic, then, in the 
great majority of cases must frankly be in 
the first instance an appeal to self-interest ; 
even as the churches have laid stress upon 
the view of individual salvation and the 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 201 

escape from unpleasant consequences. But 
this, it should be clearly understood, only 
amounts to a concession to human weak- 
ness ; and yet even so, it is a humble step 
upon the ladder of evolution. 

Self-interest, and What Then ? 

We have seen that the first thing is to 
Secure the opening or the point of contact 
with an individual, and we have agreed that 
although self-interest may awaken or stimu- 
late a person's attention, yet the matter can 
by no means be allowed to rest permanently 
on that basis. All education is at first the 
development of the individual ; the child 
sets out to acquire knowledge, skill, self- 
control, and so forth. The apprentice works 
to develop his own technical ability and to 
make the routine of his trade part of his 
store of knowledge ; a doctor trains for 
his vocation by the calling into action of 
his powers of intellect and sympathy, his 
skill and wisdom. In each of these cases 
the beginning is necessarily made with the 
individual himself, and in other words the 
interests of the self are rightly first con- 
sulted. But just as one goes to buy boots, 
not that he simply should possess boots, but 



202 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

in order that he should have something that 
will enable him to walk in comfort and ease, 
so also the object of the self -development 
is simply that the faculties brought into 
action should be capable of doing useful 
work, and should do it. 

When powers are thus used they may be 
turned in two directions, either for the 
service of the individual or for others ; and 
it is here that so many of our younger 
friends make the great error. They con- 
sider that their education is primarily in- 
tended to enable them to get on, to make 
money, fame, or position, and that the 
service they can render to their day and 
generation is a matter of secondary import, 
where indeed it receives any attention at 
all. For this short-sighted view they are 
not wholly to blame, since the distinction is 
by no means clear in the minds of those to 
whom they turn for instruction ; but the 
net result is to give the wrong bias to their 
whole outlook, and to turn the vision in- 
ward to the self when it should range out- 
ward to the illimitable scope in the world for 
intelligent and honest service. It is not in 
the least important that a scholar should 
have his head packed with facts unless 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 203 

those facts and his training are to be of some 
use in the world ; it is of little use that a 
doctor should be familiar with the pharma- 
copoeia unless he prescribes. The mere 
fact that we may have laboured hard and 
long to secure some particular development 
of ability is of little avail if we do not turn 
that ability to practical purpose ; but upon 
what that particular purpose may be hangs 
the question at issue. If the glorification 
of self, the enrichment or aggrandisement, 
or possibly the gratification of self be the 
prime object, then the whole effect will be 
to stultify and render ignoble the work as 
well as the worker. 

Frequently the motive in work may be a 
mixed one, and the worker, while realising 
that the ideal of service and utility is of 
prime importance, may endeavour to give 
good service because he knows that its 
value will be reflected back to him in cash 
or kind. This marks a stage of progress, 
but the next step is the recognition that 
greater than service for business' sake is 
service for its own sake. With the advance 
from the purely selfish view of development 
to that of devoting our ability to the service 
of others, there comes a refining and an 



204 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

advance in the capacity for happiness 
itself. Not only do we enjoy our own 
happiness, but we experience an additional 
happiness in the joy of others. The point 
is illustrated by the way in which we ex- 
perience pain ourselves in watching the 
pain of another ; for the moment we 
identify ourselves with him and vividly 
picture what we imagine he must be feeling. 
It is the process known as identification, 
and it is responsible for the way in which 
we actually live, in our minds, through 
the adventures of the hero or heroine in 
the book that interests us so much. It 
explains why we are so silly as to weep at 
the play when we really know that it is only 
make-believe ; we have identified ourselves 
with the actors and are experiencing their 
emotions at second hand. Perhaps some- 
thing of the same consideration may ex- 
plain how it is that maiden ladies take so 
absorbing an interest in things matrimonial. 
At any rate, this same phenomenon goes 
some way to account for the double happi- 
ness we may earn by working for the joy 
of others. 

By yet another stage we come to the dawn 
of that spiritual insight which shows us 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 205 

self- development, service, and altruism as 
ascending steps on the ladder of progress 
which, as spiritual beings, we needs must 
climb. We see men as spirits seeking to 
discover their own divinity, making their 
mistakes, living through their tragedies, 
playing false to their own better selves, 
finding, losing, keeping, and hiding their 
potential greatness, and yet all the while 
and in spite of themselves learning to 
discard the evil and to choose of their own 
free-will the shade better. In every vaga- 
bond and saint we discern a brother, and 
for the former we know that it is ignorance 
of his own nature and powers that keeps 
him down ; in every fallen woman we 
acknowledge a sister whom some man's love 
might have sanctified instead of debasing. 
So we look upon this world of busy spirits 
and we know that the one watchword is 
progress ; and then to our listening ears 
there comes the insistent call to be up and 
doing what we may to help. God's work 
is only to be done here by human hands, 
and when we try to work for His sake and 
for the sake of those who are His sons and 
daughters whom He loves, then in all 
reverence does the principle of identification 



206 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

turn our thoughts upward, and our happi- 
ness reaches out to touch the hem of the 
garment of a greater joy. 

Great eminences bespeak deep valleys, and 
the development of the scope and intensity 
of happiness carries with it the power to 
feel a weight of grief. As a man grows and 
refines and rids himself of the clogging effect 
of self-centredness, his sensitiveness in- 
creases to a marked degree. The cabbage 
is placid, but cannot be said to be happy ; 
and so there are many who, by reason of the 
limited range of their feelings, and their 
lack of sensitiveness, never experience the 
heights or the depths of feeling. But they 
are scarcely to be envied. The zest of life 
lies not in those things we fail to experience, 
but in the hazards that we win, the dangers 
we brave, the loves we gain, the tears we 
stay. Poor consolation would it be to say 
at the end of a life — " Thank heaven, 
nothing ever happened to me." Who would 
sing of life in one octave of a scale when he 
might range the whole gamut ? 

Life is not measured by the swing of the 
pendulum, but by the pulsing of the blood 
in the veins, not by hours and half-hours 
but by experience ; and it has been well 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 207 

said that the flitting butterfly who kisses a 
thousand pairs of lips in half an afternoon 
lives more in his short span than the tortoise 
with a couple of hundred years to his slow 
discredit. The measure of experience is our 
sensitiveness, which again hangs on the 
refinement of the self ; some clod-men must 
needs be hit with half a brick before they 
notice, while to another the inflection of a 
voice is ecstasy or grief. The more we live 
for, feel for, work for, and love others, 
the keener does our sensitiveness become ; 
the greater also is our capacity for happi- 
ness. Selfishness keeps us eternally small, 
restricted, and unlovable ; it turns us 
inward, and though it may conduce to a 
certain immunity from suffering and dis- 
comfort (as of a man seated by his own 
warm fireside whilst the storm rages 
out of doors), or may even give an 
illusory type of pleasure, yet it is gradually 
destroying the finer sensitiveness and 
response which are the roots of our capacity 
for happiness. 

The Responsibility for Happiness 

Comparatively few to-day realise the 
extraordinary power they have over their 



208 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

surroundings and the many things that 
happen to them day by day, and it therefore 
follows that they are little likely to recog- 
nise the responsibilities that are truly theirs. 
As we have before pointed out, they lose 
sight of their intermediate steps and so fail to 
trace the connection between the cause and 
the effect. The whole of our present effort 
has been to show this consonance working 
between thought and externals, and even 
slight concentration on the matter will 
demonstrate particular instances abounding 
everywhere. A bedroom, for instance, will 
at once show whether its occupant is tidy, 
methodical, or the reverse ; one's books will 
show the general trend of one's thoughts; 
the garden will advertise the mind of the 
owner ; the dress will indicate character ; 
the temper will demonstrate the degree 
of mental control ; the handshake will be 
a useful guide to the strength of character 
and general vitality, and such details in 
consonance could be multiplied indefinitely. 
We may at once concede the existence of 
this similarity, and at the same time admit 
our partial responsibility for having made 
these externals what they are. 

We are, however, not alone in making 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 209 

them ; other people have in the same way 
made their own, and to a certain degree 
have assisted in making ours as well. 
Thus does the brotherhood of man show 
itself in practical guise, and demonstrate 
that it is impossible for us to live to our- 
selves alone. The human brain is a wonder- 
ful object-lesson in brotherhood principles ; 
we have the grey matter of the surface of the 
brain cortex registering those cell changes 
which serve to make memory possible, 
and we have the white matter of the under 
side of the cortex composed of a mass of 
associative fibres joining cell to cell. No 
cell is lonely or isolated, every one has 
two or more fibres linking it up somewhere, 
and most of the cells have many more. 
When one cell is stimulated there pass 
messages along the fibres, ringing up the 
companion cells, and making general or 
district calls when required. John tells 
Mary, and Mary whispers it to Jane, and 
presently the whole family knows about it, 
and tells the people next door, so that soon 
it is all over the place — brotherhood (and 
sisterhood !) of man with a vengeance. 
Thus the brain points out to us the way in 

which we influence each other for happiness 

14 



210 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

or the reverse, and shows our corresponding 
responsibility to each other. 

But it is not merely the family circle 
that we more or less directly influence, it 
is everybody with whom we come in con- 
tact ; even the people we pass in the street 
become our debtors or our creditors. If we 
wear a sour expression or scowl horribly, 
then we are in their debt for the " God 
forgive you ! " that they no doubt echo 
piously to themselves as we pass ; on the 
other hand, if we carry ourselves cheerfully, 
and occasionally — if so be opportunity 
offers — pass the glint of a greeting along the 
eye-glance, then perhaps we may well be 
entitled to post up that account with " to 
One Glance that nobody but you and I 
noticed . . . price (in happiness) . . . 
not for sale." People who wear heavy 
black, and folk who grumble audibly and 
make nasty remarks to overworked wait- 
resses ; individuals who reek with eucalyp- 
tus, and persons who push in the lifts, and 
ladies who gush and simper ; these must 
all share the responsibility for things as 
they are. Every one, in fact, is in some way 
being a plus or a minus quality in the world, 
adding to or subtracting from its progress 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 211 

by very virtue of the fact that we are all 
one great and rather unwieldy family, and 
intimately bound up with one another for 
weal or woe, for better for worse, em- 
phatically for richer or poorer, and probably 
for a good long while after we think we shall 
be dead. 

Again the argument forcibly presents 
itself that, if we can do anything at all 
to influence our own happiness and that 
of others, we should do something construc- 
tive instead of simply sitting down and 
criticising what the other gentleman does. 
Obviously the people in my house will not 
be any happier if I go home and bang things 
about and make myself a general nuisance ; 
this hardly requires demonstration. Equally, 
if I go home in some other fashion they may 
well be happier. But if the charwoman has 
thrown something at the cat and smashed 
the best dinner service and upset the house, 
my hopes of a happy evening will be rudely 
dissipated ; on such trifles hang the destiny 
of our affairs. The place to begin to order 
things aright is very evidently indicated 
by the analysis of the last section — with the 
self. So soon as we have educated ourselves 
to be happy we have become a stabilising 



212 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

centre for the whole of our circumferential 
affairs. Education in happiness is to be 
accomplished by the agency of thought, 
in the same way as any other education. 
Every thought counts and remains with us, 
and after continuous and consistent thinking 
on happy things we gain a permanent bias 
in that direction, we have developed a 
certain poise of happiness which is not 
easily disturbed. This, of course, must have 
its reflex on the family circle which at once 
becomes more equable. Then, if only each 
of the other members of the family party 
could be induced to follow the same line 
of thought, there can be but little doubt 
that the circle would quickly become notably 
happy. The influence of the circle would 
be safely trusted to spread out in ever- 
widening waves, and the good that it might 
do cannot be calculated. Thus the power 
to be happy will naturally tend to make 
happiness for others, and in so doing the 
first happiness must necessarily be increased; 
and then the next step is to note the fact 
that happiness is God's blessing upon a 
decent-minded world, and unhappiness is a 
dose of medicine demanded by the very 
nature of our complaint. But God never 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 213 

" sent " pain, unhappiness, sickness, or any 
other adversity ; we attracted it by our 
wrong thinking, and with the reversal of 
our mis-thinking its tendency is to vanish ; 
for health, well-being, and happiness are 
the dower of those who cheerfully strive 
to follow the only path that leads home. 

Self-Expression as a Means of Happiness 

In dealing with the point of psycho- 
analysis we saw how large a part repression 
played in morbid mental processes, but 
quite apart from any question of abnor- 
mality it is also an ever-present influence 
in a vast number of lives. It is a fact that 
the majority of people fail to find any 
adequate means of expressing themselves, 
and consequently their feelings and emotions 
are pent within them, and the individual 
feels — and feels rightly — that he or she is 
not understood, or else is misunderstood. 
From this feeling, which of course multiplies 
itself with every entry into consciousness, 
springs a fruitful crop of difficulties the net 
result of which is to make the individual's 
life fall short in more or less serious degree 
of what it might have been. Life is ex- 
pression, freedom, expansion, and growth, 



214 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

while the opposites of these — repression, re- 
striction, limitation, and rigidity — approxi- 
mate far more nearly to the state of death. 
A river is only a river while it sweeps onward 
to the sea, a tree is only a tree while it 
grows, and a man is more or less of a man 
precisely as he is able to express his real 
self. 

We have been at pains to lay stress upon 
the essential fact of our spiritual nature, 
and we would make the point eminently 
clear that the spiritual element within us 
is, as it were, but a fragment or an in- 
dividualised part of the great Spirit — of 
God. Our birthright is this element of 
divinity, the dower of the most humble 
and obscure equally with the high-born, 
and this the link of relationship which makes 
us sons of God. We do but begin to arrive 
at the true meaning of life when we realise 
that by the expression of this divinity we 
grow in spirit, and in this spiritual growth 
travel along the path of our evolution. 
With the repression of our divinity we deny 
our spirituality and inevitably gravitate 
towards material aims and ends, for there 
are but the two gospels from which we 
may take our choice. Thus in expressing 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 215 

ourselves we act, as the fountain acts, to 
give forth that which is supplied from a 
higher source ; the spirit is not of our own 
making. When the fountain ceases to play 
and becomes choked up, it is no longer a 
fountain, though it may look like one ; and 
when a man ceases to express the divine he 
may still bear resemblance to his fellow- 
man, but he has lost the essence of his 
manhood. Even so a religion may lose its 
spiritual essence and still bear the outward 
form of a religion while it is truly but the 
shell of a quondam faith. 

The animals possess consciousness in the 
shape of reaction to stimulus, they receive 
evidences through their senses, and within 
a limited range they know. Mankind, 
however, differs from the animal in that he 
knows he knows ; he is conscious of know- 
ing, and has developed a self-consciousness. 
The animal reacts perfectly freely and 
naturally to his surroundings because he 
lacks any element of this self-consciousness, 
but by reason of its possession there are 
only too many human beings who deny 
themselves any sort of freedom in reaction 
or expression. It is right and proper that 
we should develop the latent powers and 



216 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

capacities that are within, but it must at 
the same time be realised that the every 
increase of those powers is likely to involve 
us in difficulties unless in proportion as 
they increase we develop our own control 
over them. A forty-horse-power car out of 
control is likely to do a good deal more 
damage than a scooter. It is for this very 
reason that we must deprecate anything 
save the due and balanced development of 
the individual ; it is, for example, perfectly 
easy to develop the psychic powers that are 
latent in each of us, but unless the mental, 
moral, physical, and spiritual control be 
developed and fostered in due and adequate 
proportion, it is simply inviting trouble. 
It is equally easy to develop the intellectual 
capacities at the expense of the body, then 
the latter breaks down and shows the im- 
possibility of the intellect doing any useful 
work here without having an appropriately 
developed physical instrument through 
which to work. 

Children are excellent at self-expression ; 
they will just as easily express themselves 
as wild Indians or father and mother. 
They have, as a rule, no self-consciousness, 
until it is put into them by precept or 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 217 

example ; they are simply little animals 
at play until someone comes on the scene 
with a soul-destroying " don't." True, they 
are occasionally extremely trying with their 
antics to the sober-sided adult who has 
solidified into a mass of indolent habit ; 
it may be exasperating to have attempts 
at self-expression in blue pencil registered 
on the drawing-room wall-paper, but after 
all these are but little contretemps of days 
that quickly pass into yesterdays, while the 
soul lives for many to-morrows. We do so 
sadly need to invoke a sense of proportion 
in order to distinguish between the things 
that do and that do not matter. It is no 
doubt annoying to have something mislaid, 
misused, or lost, but the article, whatever 
it may be, can probably be renewed or re- 
placed, and, at any rate, it has a monetary 
value ; but the anger or the irritation 
which the circumstance provokes is in 
another category. This is scored in per- 
manent effects upon the minds of all who 
experience it, and, becoming part of them, 
it is henceforth written as one of the things 
that never pass and most emphatically do 
matter. 

The avenues for the child's expression of 



218 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

its feelings are many, and sometimes in- 
appropriate ; singing, dancing, romping, 
playing, howling, and kicking all have their 
turn. As the child grows up, anything 
that offers an avenue for the outlet of 
energy has its place, and with the expression 
of the quality the quality itself grows. 
Graceful gestures and dancing, or Eurhyth- 
mies, in expressing the poetry of motion 
and the charm of posture increase the grace, 
and securing mental record, as they in- 
evitably must, tend to impart a further 
measure of grace to the mind as well as to 
the body. We have often marvelled at 
the extraordinary grace and abandon of 
some actresses, and the reflection comes into 
mind as to whether the unusual measure 
of grace and freedom is the result of the 
Bohemian freedom from convention which 
is notoriously theirs ; we may even doubt 
whether a conventionally-minded actress 
could achieve the same degree of graceful 
movement and gesture. Is not there all the 
difference in the world between the amat- 
eur and the professional danseuse, and is 
this solely a matter of muscular dexterity ? 
Is it not much more likely to be due to 
these mental differences which forbid an 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 219 

equal expression of freedom to the. amateur 
who has herself never been free from the 
trammels of a stiffening convention ? 

To find full expression in song, dance, 
action, speech, or emotion is to feel an 
ecstasy of happiness ; to be denied such is a 
species of slow torture which is sometimes 
the prelude to a lingering death. There are 
ten thousand means, but just the one aching, 
ever-present need for self-expression ; the 
same spirit trying to find its growth by 
emerging into conscious action that it 
may again be recorded. It is for each of 
us to mirror forth from the little candles 
of self the light that has shined upon us 
from above ; it is the spirit within that 
we must express, and in fullest expression 
find the maximum of growth, and therefore 
of happiness. 

Life's Many Problems 

Civilisation to-day lands us in a highly 
complex situation, and confronts us with 
a range of problems so diverse in semblance 
as to cause us almost to despair of finding 
solutions to them. If we are content to 
take things at their apparent value without 
seeing below the surface we may well believe 



220 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

that there can be no way out, but when we 
set to work to analyse things and sort them 
out they begin to lose some of their com- 
plexity and terror. Fundamentally there 
are two methods of growth open to us : the 
one the voluntary method, and the other 
compulsory. God says " learn " ; and it 
is open to us to set to work and study life 
in general and ourselves in particular, and 
so learn wisdom ; or else to refuse to learn 
voluntarily and be compulsorily hammered 
on the anvil of circumstance. In either 
case we learn ; and the only option we can 
have is as to the choice of the method. 
Most of us blunder blind-eyed through the 
days and years without exercising much 
common sense or discrimination as to the 
most serious things of life, and consequently 
most of us are being hammered day in and 
day out. We are hammered by ill-health, 
unhappiness, poverty, mistakes, and other 
people ; and for the hammerings we dis- 
tribute the blame delightfully impartially 
between the general wrong-headedness of 
other folk and the unsatisfactory state of the 
universe as a whole. But, unfortunately, 
this does little to alleviate things, which to 
us is further proof — if such were necessary — 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 221 

of what a mess the Ruler of the Universe 
has made of his job. 

However, if we are but content for a space 
to lay aside this quite preposterous attitude 
and look a little further into things, we shall 
be able to see the other way of growing. 
We can then begin to analyse and probe, 
and take an intelligent interest in these 
affairs which, after all, concern us so very 
intimately. Most of the muddle we shall be 
able without much difficulty to trace back 
to ourselves, and the bulk of what remains 
we can assign in a measure to those whose 
lot we of necessity share ; and the very 
small residuum which to us is untranslatable 
we can safely lay aside for future considera- 
tion in the light of further knowledge. The 
residuum is, after all, so very small that it is 
hardly worth attributing it to the mistakes 
of the creator, a perverse universe, or even 
to a ramping, roaring devil. These causes, 
whether actions or states of mind, are 
directly to be referred to previous thought 
and lie therefore in the realm of mind. Con- 
sequently any alteration must be primarily 
a thought alteration or revision — education, 
in fact ; it is next door to useless to work 
at externals and try to effect improvement 



222 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

at the outside. The external manifesta- 
tions are merely the symptoms of an inward 
and spiritual lack of logic and under- 
standing, and it is futile to deal with them 
and leave the central disturbance exactly 
as before. 

To take one or two concrete instances by 
way of illustration. Poverty can never 
be cured by the giving of doles, which simply 
enable the poverty to continue. Why are 
people poor ? There are obviously many 
causes, and unless we proceed by the in- 
telligent process of diagnosis we may succeed 
in doing more harm than good. A penny 
given to a healthy beggar who is able but 
unwilling to work is a pennyworth of damna- 
tion to him and a measure of blame to the 
donor. Most people are poor because they 
do not understand their own nature or 
powers, and because they do not understand 
the elementary laws of living ; teach them 
of these and probably the poverty will 
automatically vanish with the removal of 
its causes. If they learn of these and are 
still unwilling to put the knowledge to any 
practical use in order to work out their own 
salvation, then they will remain poor because 
the poverty of circumstance is the reflex 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 223 

of their poverty of mind ; they deserve to 
be poor because they are at that particular 
stage where only poverty can teach them 
the lessons of evolution. It is, in any case, 
quite impossible to try and equalise man- 
kind ; men are not born equal, neither are 
they in any way equal subsequently, in fact 
there is the utmost range and diversity, and 
any attempt to make things otherwise is 
foredoomed to failure. The utmost we can 
do is to devise equality of opportunity with 
the certainty before us that inequality will 
immediately manifest itself in the way that 
opportunity is utilised. Education (though 
by no means in the general sense in which 
it is understood to-day) is the only true 
cure for poverty. 

Venereal diseases are another case in 
point ; they are rampant to-day. Why ? 
Because human nature is what it is. But 
is free treatment going to help in any degree 
to the enlightenment of human nature ? 
Why is human nature where it stands to- 
day ? Simply because we have not made 
it any better, and because we have always 
been too ready to deal with externals instead 
of going to the root of things. Human 
nature can only be raised by raising the 



224 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

type and ideal of human thinking ; again 
education is the key. The Church should, 
down all the ages, have patterned the think- 
ing on these and kindred subjects, but as 
a whole the influence of the Church to-day 
is little more than negligible ; it must con- 
tinue so to be while its individual exponents 
fail to keep abreast of the men and women 
whom they should influence. Crime again 
shows us how utterly futile are repressive 
measures when unaccompanied by the in- 
culcation of higher ideals. Most crimes are 
blundering attempts on the part of our 
friends the criminals to find the road to 
Utopia ; they are completely dissatisfied 
with the scheme of things as they find it 
to-day, and they express their efforts after 
better things in the egregious mistakes 
which land them in gaol. In the ample 
leisure that a beneficent Government there 
allows them they ponder and think over 
their old ideas in default of new and better, 
and out they come once more determined 
to be a trifle more careful over the same 
crime next time. If we could only show 
them that we are in entire sympathy with 
their laudable desire to reach a better state 
of affairs for themselves individually, but 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 225 

that the road they are taking to achieve 
that end does not lead there, and if we 
could enlist their intelligence in showing 
how by saner methods they can help them- 
selves (perhaps more stably and not quite 
so literally), we should have done something 
towards turning them into good citizens 
and useful members of society. Education 
again. 

The necessity for self-realisation is para- 
mount to-day ; we should see our limitations 
and our possibilities. We should note to the 
full the power of thought both to build and 
destroy, according to its use and direction. 
Negatives wound, slay, and kill as surely 
as a bullet maims the body ; happiness 
cannot exist where these hold sway and 
dominance. Negative thought, misdirected 
ideas, and ignorance are the main causes of 
the problems that beset us, and not until 
spiritual insight educates us into finer 
conceptions of life and love can we hope to 
do more than exchange one problem for 
another. If we are truly wise we shall 
pray daily on our bended knees for that 
spiritual discernment which shall enable us 
to see the knotty problem of spirit that lies 

at the heart of every mundane difficulty. 

15 



226 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

Sacred and Secular 

Sacred and secular are two main divisions 
into which it will be generally conceded 
the activities of our daily lives fall, and from 
the apparently clear distinction we make 
between the two we are apt to deduce some 
sort of opposition between them. But, as 
a matter of fact, this arbitrary fashion of 
making our activities dual in type results 
in error of a very far-reaching kind. All 
life is one, a manifestation of spirit ; and 
though its phases of activity may be count- 
less in form and variation, yet, unless the 
spirituality underlying the whole be fully 
recognised, it is tolerably certain that trouble 
will arise. We can see how in the past it 
has arisen over and over again, and we can 
only suppose that given the same conditions 
the same results will again appear. The 
secular and purely scientific progress made 
by Germany in the days before the war was 
an achievement of no mean order, but there 
was distinct and considered divorce between 
that progress and the spiritual sense that 
should have directed it into worthier 
channels. Evolution has now passed its 
irrevocable verdict upon the legitimacy of 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 227 

such divorce. As in the case of the in- 
dividual, progress, in order to be other than 
dangerous, must be leavened and accom- 
panied by a growth of spiritual insight to 
match. Germany overbalanced herself and 
fell because her development was entirely 
on the material plane, and distorted her 
growth to such an extent that she was out 
of the line of evolution as a nation, and a 
source of hindrance to the development of 
kindred nations. No angry God destroyed 
her, she simply destroyed herself ; our 
mistakes contain within themselves all that 
is necessary of retribution. But she has 
offered to the world a gigantic lesson of the 
normal result of this impossible divorce of 
sacred from secular. 

We ourselves in the realm of education 
to-day are for all practical purposes making 
this same mistake ; dogmatic theology may 
perhaps be out of place in any scholastic 
curriculum, but the gravest danger may be 
apprehended from a non-recognition of the 
spiritual verities. The proper question to 
be addressed to education is — " Does it 
assist spiritual evolution ? " The more 
usual question is — " Does it assist the scholar 
to make a good living ? " He may make a 



228 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

good living ; Germany was making an 
excellent living ; but she demonstrated the 
impossibility of living by bread alone. I 
have taught in many schools, but I assert 
that in practically all of them religion 
had considerably less vitality than Latin 
grammar ; and I also say that the keenness 
on the part of the boys to know, to learn, 
and to question upon matters of serious 
import is there in full force, but that, in 
effect, it is frozen out by the cold comfort 
it is able to extract from modern theology. 
Considerations such as these are bound to 
arise in any analytic treatment of the roots 
of happiness, since happiness is, and must 
ever be, so largely dependent upon spiritual 
perception. Is Germany happy ? 

In many other directions also this segrega- 
tion of the ideals of spirit from the morals 
of the day is manifest. We have mentioned 
the case of venereal diseases ; but we may 
further say that a man must perforce lock 
up his spiritual understanding extremely 
tightly before he can allow his passions to 
take control. He must necessarily stifle 
any thought for the welfare of the other, 
or subordinate it completely to a soul- 
destroying selfishness ; of the spiritual 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 229 

significance of unhallowed union lie lias 
probably never thought at all. He does not 
realise that in truth what we think upon 
we actually become, so that the lover in 
thinking of the beloved does actually and 
definitely build her into the fabric of his 
being, and she becomes part of him, seeing 
that his personality is his memory. Equally 
so does the soul he degrades become part 
of him, to wield an influence in his destiny 
and to weave her thread into the pattern 
of his being. In other directions, where, 
we may ask, is the spiritual conception 
while a man owns slum property which 
stunts the physical and spiritual growth of 
those who live in it ; and where, again, is 
it when a man thrives as to his pocket upon 
the sweated labour of those whose eternal 
interest demands that they shall be paid 
more ? The one pointed — yea, even barbed 
— question for him is, "Does it conduce to 
spiritual evolution, theirs or mine ? " And 
this question in only too many cases he 
truly dare not ask. 

So we might go on at length and trace 
the many ways in which the fatal process 
of separating the sacred and secular operates. 
Nothing can obscure the fact of our own 



230 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

spiritual nature, and that the object of our 
existence is spiritual evolution ; these are 
the two great central verities, and our 
happiness depends upon our lives being 
adjusted in conformity thereto. Civilisa- 
tion itself is but the organised development 
of humanity towards better things, but 
unless we freely recognise that this also is 
spiritual evolution we shall not really get 
to the heart of our problems. Here again, 
on a larger scale, the same question must be 
asked as the test of right policy, " Does 
it conduce to spiritual evolution, theirs or 
ours ? " We cannot see that there is any 
need for word- juggling or formulae, philo- 
sophical abstractions or finesse in dealing 
with such a clear-cut issue. There is too 
much hair-splitting and quibbling in to- 
day's thinking ; but we can hardly be in 
two minds as to this point of our spiritual 
nature, for either it is true or it is not. 
This point organised science is fast settling 
for those who have not decided it for 
themselves already. We need not be 
ashamed of being spirits, for after all we 
are not responsible for it ; all that we are 
called upon to do is to find out what we 
may of the great scheme of things and do 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 231 

our little best to help it along. While it 
concerns earthly affairs we may be well 
assured that it will require the services of 
earthly workers to keep it moving. 

It is the rankest folly to suppose that we 
can be sinners all the week and delude 
ourselves into believing that we are saints 
on Sunday, dividing our worship between 
God and the supertax and our fears between 
Hell and the Bankruptcy Court. The prin- 
ciples of life which are spiritual principles 
do not operate as and when required, but 
always and universally ; and even business 
transactions in an ideal world will conform 
to the same standard test to which we have 
already referred. The truth is that both 
sacred and secular avocations are manifesta- 
tions of the spirit and opportunities for its 
growth and development ; and the sooner 
we remarry the sacred and the secular 
after their entirely ineffective divorce, then 
the better it will be for their progeny of 
result in every sphere of our present-day 
activity. 

The Vital Principle 

We have now in these few pages en- 
deavoured to point to the effects of the 



232 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

operation of thought in various directions. 
We are compelled to admit that thought 
activity underlies, where it does not com- 
pletely control, these different manifesta- 
tions ; and, in any case, the question need 
remain in no doubt since it may so easily 
be put to the test of individual experience. 
We may further watch the process at work 
by observing the mental attitude of the 
various people we come across, and com- 
paring it with the results as shown in their 
outward circumstances. Where the result 
naturally to be expected follows in due 
course, we see an exemplification of the 
general principle ; but where such results 
are definitely off the expected fines, it will 
generally be found on closer investigations 
that there are other factors entering in 
and influencing the results. It is by no 
means necessary to discard the general 
principle. ,- 

Thought, then, is a tremendously potent 
factor in health ; it is no less so in business, 
and it also bulks largely in the question of 
happiness. According to its direction we 
must acknowledge also that thought may 
be either a constructive or a destructive 
force ; and, further, that the constructive 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 233 

thoughts are, in some way or degree, varia- 
tions or derivatives of the one great con- 
structive force in the universe — Love. The 
destructive forces play negative to the 
positives and bespeak the absence or in- 
sufficiency of love. Fear, for example, is 
the absence of sufficient courage ; and 
courage is a derivative of love, as witness 
the supreme courage of even an animal 
defending its young, or the extraordinary 
things a mother will do and dare for her 
child. Selfishness, again, is the negation 
of service which is the practical expression 
of love. So we might go through all the 
negatives and trace in each one the absence, 
insufficiency, or denial of the great positive 
root principle. 

Love is the widest word in the language ; 
Scripture has placed it on record that God is 
Love, and further that God is a Spirit. 
Thus it would seem that God, Love, and 
Spirit are most intimately connected in 
significance ; and again, love and service 
are ideas that stand in the closest relation- 
ship. It seems to clear the way for an 
intensely practical appreciation of life to 
state these fundamental conceptions, for 
then the spirit seems to supply the static 



234 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

basis and love the dynamic, while the point 
of application of the moving force lies 
in service. The conception of spirit links 
man in his rudimentary divinity to his God, 
the ultimate source of all his spiritual energy 
and capacity ; while the word " service " 
marks the essential unity between the pro- 
fessed principles of organised religion and 
of modern business. The overshadowing 
Spirit of God links together all humanity 
as one great family of sons and daughters 
travelling the long path of spiritual evolu- 
tion, whether in one life or in many, towards 
a final goal which is far beyond our ken. 
It is indeed in no way necessary for us to 
comprehend the ultimate ; any definition 
we may make must of necessity be couched 
in terms of our present limitation, and 
therefore must be to that extent insufficient, 
if not untrue. Moreover, in settling the gaze 
so far ahead there is the gravest danger that 
we may overlook the call for the service that 
is our immediate duty. There is great need 
of a groundwork of common sense, and even 
while the astronomer gazes at the stars 
there is no reason why he should not sit 
on a four-legged stool. 

What need is there for dogma and for- 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 235 

mulse ? The scheme, at any rate, possesses 
the merit of simplicity, and it involves no 
strain upon the credulity. It is limited and 
imperfect, of course ; but so are we, and 
as we grow in wisdom and in stature we 
shall no doubt make improvement in detail 
upon it. But the vital point is that the 
need for some clear conception of the funda- 
mentals of life and its meaning is intense ; 
without it the world cannot hope to regain 
its sanity and balance, while we may very 
well go from bad to worse in the endeavour 
to straighten things out. There is nothing 
in these simple ideas at loggerheads with 
the latest findings of science. Solid matter 
is not solid matter ; on the electron theory 
it is immaterial, a manifestation of some- 
thing about which science is not quite clear. 
Call it x 9 the unknown ; that will save 
anybody's face, and commit nobody. But 
we believe that it will not be many years 
before matter is generally recognised as a 
manifestation of spirit. However, as we 
have said before, the important point is not 
the academic view but the practical ; the 
only way to test a working theory is to see 
how far it fits in with the facts as they occur, 
and the more facts it legitimately explains 



236 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

the more probable is its truth. But life is 
not lived in a laboratory or museum, it is 
lived in slums, hovels, shops and offices, 
clean country, and smoke-damned towns ; 
if love works here and meets the facts, then 
we can a thousand times afford to let non- 
essentials go, and keep tight hold of a central 
truth. 

The view we take must not be founded 
upon too short a range of experience in point 
of time, nor upon too limited a selection 
of lives. Long-moulded circumstances are 
comparatively solid and need much work 
before they are demolished, while the lately- 
formed surroundings are the more easily 
altered. But if anyone will take the trouble 
to commence the regulation of his thoughts, 
beginning at the easy things first, he will 
assuredly soon find a reflex to his new 
thinking in his circumstances or health. 
The building of love into the fabric of the 
mind, if continued over several years, will 
produce astonishing results ; and the in- 
dividual will perforce admit that he has 
risen in the scale of life as a result of his 
efforts. As we have pointed out, this is a 
process which can be utilised by even the 
humblest individual, while the most learned 



THOUGHT AND HAPPINESS 237 

can by no means afford to scorn it. The 
regeneration of humanity can only be 
accomplished by the spade work of its 
individual units ; churches, societies, and 
unions can assist by the promulgation of 
sane ideals and precepts, but every yard of 
progress must be paid for by someone's 
hard striving and effort. 

Let us build civilisation spiritual and we 
shall build it safe and sane ; but on the 
get-rich- quick plan, the more-money-for- 
less-work model, or the hit-and-hit-back 
principle there can be no stability. Let us 
have done with the details of theological 
disputation and return to the broad prin- 
ciples of spiritual life, substituting co-opera- 
tion for industrial civil war and class 
antagonism. Let us get together on the 
basis of the fact that we are spirits, agreeing 
that Character is the only real and perma- 
nent possession we may have. Then let us 
strive to fashion a better world peopled 
with folk who know a little about them- 
selves, who have an idea as to where they 
are travelling, who know what they want 
to do, and have more than a shrewd idea as 
to how to do it. 

We have to-day an opportunity colossal 



238 THE INFLUENCE OF THOUGHT 

in its scope ; and the one thing needed is 
the control, harnessing, and direction of 
this wonderful power of thought. Then 
shall it be devoted and consecrated, through 
the individual man and woman, to the 
service of humanity and civilisation, and 
to the furtherance of that evolution which 
shall bring mankind nearer to God, and 
Heaven a little closer to this sorely-tried 
and battered earth. 



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